How do you factor #8x^2 - 4x - 24#?
2 Answers
Well, you can factor out 4 immediately:
You can work out that the further factorization will look something like:
and
so you know that
and
You know that either a or b must be negative, and the other number must be positive.
At this point, I usually resort to trial and error guessing. There are usually a couple of choices, so try one, then the other.
so what if
...good guess. So your factorization will be:
Explanation:
First take out the common factor of
Find factors of