Question 43870: Can anyone give me some help with this? I need the steps and solution:
Factor each polynomial
a² - a – 35
Answer by fractalier(6550)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! To factor, we mean to undo multiplication...that is, we wish to find out what quantities we need to multiply together to arrive at the expression given...so from
a² - a – 35
we set up a pair of binomial factors
( )( )
and then realize that we can only get a^2 from a times a, so plug in and get
(a )(a )
We look at the second sign...if it is negative, we know our factors have different signs...so we have
(a + )(a - )
Now we say, "What are the factors of 35 that have a difference of 1?"
Well there is no such pair in this case (I think the problem was written incorrectly)
If the problem were a² - a – 30, we would have
(a - 6)(a + 5)
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