I've got bad news for the quadratic formula. I won't be needing its services as much anymore.
For the past couple years, I've never been able to factor trinomials. It's always frustrated me. A very simple algebra 1 concept that I could *never* understand, as basic as it was, even as I learned higher level skills. Never clicked. I'd be screwed if I had to do something with a polynomial with a degree greater than two (as that was beyond my favorite formula's abilities), especially if I didn't know any zeroes. b
But it all of a sudden clicked. I figured out an expression that came up in some simple problem and got it into a form where I could easily see the zeroes.
I guess it was hard because there's no systematic process for doing that which I've known. Every example I've seen, either in textbooks or demonstrated, has the solver of the problem just writing down the right answer. It's trial and error, but no one else ever makes any errors.
I'm really psyched. This is like the time I learned that a zero c of a function can be factored out as (x-c) [In fact, I checked my answer with that concept]. Or when it clicked, after writing some code on my own time to map azimuth/altitude as a graphic for a sky map, that cos(π/2 - x) = sin (x), and then, not a week later, found the exact same formula in the math book (though later I felt dumb because I'd seen a graph of sinusodial functions a long time before and there was obviously a π/2 difference between them). But it's so cool to see different approaches to the same concepts represented in different ways.
For all my love of math, though, I don't get much back. It's like a bad relationship. And thus, unfortunately, it would be unwise for me to study it when I go to college as much as I'd like to, as I can't risk the whole grade thing, especially since I'm not "good" at it (come to think of it, I'm not officially "good" at anything). Ah well. Still fun every once in a while.
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Dan Grover
co-founder of WrongPlanet.net
28 Feb 2006, 3:51 am
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
