Higher-Degree Polynomial Equations.
At this point we have seen complete methods for solving linear and quadratic equations.
For higher-degree equations, the question becomes more complicated: cubic and quartic equations
can be solved by similar formulas, and this has been known since the 16th Century: del Ferro,
Cardan, and Tartaglia are all credited with having discovered the cubic equation, and Ferrari with
the quartic equation. (Interestingly enough, the mainly self-taught genius Ramanujan, perhaps
the 20th Century's most impressive mathematical mind, discovered his own method for solving the
quartic after having been shown how to solve the cubic.) The situation becomes more bleak for
higher-degree equations: Abel showed, in the ¯rst half of the 19th Century, that ¯fth degree and
higher equations do not have similar formulas. And while he didn't live to see it done, the same
result was a natural consequence of Evariste Galois's work, a French mathematician who died in
a duel before his 21st birthday. I will not discuss the cubic or quartic formulas, but we need not
always resort to the big guns to solve special problems:

Example: Solve x³ - 1 = 0.

Solution: Our only x term is an x ³, so we can peel-the-onion:

so we see that x = 1 is a solution. Note that we were able to take the cubic root of both sides of
the equation without resorting to adding in ""s anywhere. This is because every real number has
exactly one real cubic root, since the order of the root (3) is odd.

Example: Solve x⁴ - 2x² + 1 = 0.

Solution: While this is a quartic equation that doesn't consist of only one power of x, we
do note that every power of x is even, so we make a substitution: if we let u = x² and solve for u
and get numeric values , then we can substitute x ² into those equations to get values of x :

and this is a quadratic in u with a = 1, b = -1, c = 1, so by the quadratic formula,

so u = 1. Substituting u = x² back in, we have x² = u = 1, so x is a square root of 1, meaning
x = 1.

Notice that linear equations have at most 1 solution and quadratic equations have at most 2
solutions. This is true in general: nth-degree polynomial equations have at most n real solutions.

Functions.

While the next topic may seem a bit unrelated to polynomial equations, it isn't. We're going
to discuss a more general way of looking at an equation but we need a few definitions and ideas first.

Definition: Let A and B be sets. A function f from A into B is a rule that maps every
element of A to exactly one element of B. We call the set A, the set of values that the function
takes in its domain. We call the set of all elements of B that are associated with elements of f's
domain the range of f.

Unless stated otherwise, we will deal with functions that take in real numbers (though pos-
sibly not ALL real numbers) as input, and produce real numbers as output: i.e. the domain and
range will both be sets of real numbers.

Example: Let f(x) = x, the identity function from R into R. This notation means that
our function associates the x we put in (the x in f(x)) with the value on the right-hand side of the
equation (which in this case is still x). The domain of f is R, because clearly we can put any real
value x into the formula x. The range of f is R as well, because if we let z be any real number,
then letting x = z, so x is in the domain of f, we have f(x) = x = z, so f(x) = z and z is in the
range by de¯nition.

Example: Let f(x) = x² from R into R. Notice that the formula for f(x) is a polynomial
in x: we call functions of this type polynomial functions. The domain of f is R, because if we
take any real number x, then f(x) = x² is another real number because multiplication is closed in
the reals . The range of f, on the other hand, is not all of R: for example, there is no real x so
that x² = -1, so -1 is not in the range of f. In fact, the range of f is the set of all nonnegative
reals, which we can denote [0;1) using interval notation.

Interval Notation.
(Section 1:8 of JIT)

Let a and b be real numbers, with a ≤ b. Then we define the fol lowing finite intervals from
a to b:

so [a,b] is the set of all numbers x satisfying a ≤ x ≤ b, etc. We call [a,b] a closed interval (it
contains both endpoints), (a,b) an open interval (it contains neither endpoint), and we refer to
[a,b) and (a,b] as half-open intervals. We can think of intervals as being the connected part of
the number line between a and b, and the use of parentheses or brackets determines which endpoints
are also included.

Example: The interval [0,1) is the set of all numbers between 0 and 1, including 0 and
excluding 1:

Additionally, with the use of - ∞ and ∞, we can define the following infinite intervals:

Note that - ∞ and ∞ always have a parenthesis next to them, and never a bracket.

Example: Let f(x) = 2x+5. Determine the domain and range of f, as well as f(0) and f(3).

Solution: The domain of f is R, because for every real number x, we have 2x + 5 is also a
real number.

The range of f is R. Why? Suppose z is any real number. Then in order for z to be in the
range of f, we must have an x in the domain (R) with f(x) = z. Since f(x) = 2x + 5, we get that
z is in the range of f if 2x + 5 = z has a real solution for x. But this is a linear equation in x, and
solving for x we get that x =, which is a real number and hence in the domain of f. Since z
was any real number, and we showed z is in the range, that means the range must be every real
number.

Finally, with substitution we see that
f(0) = 2(0) + 5 = 0 + 5 = 0
and
f(3) = 2(3) + 5 = 6 + 5 = 11

Example: Let f(x) =. Determine the domain and range of f.

Solution: Turning back to our definition of the radical symbol, we see that it specifically
means the nonnegative square root of x. But we know that negative numbers do not have real
square roots, so the domain is [0,1).
Since for any nonnegative x, we expect the range to be [0,1) as well: let z be a
nonnegative real number. Then z = (because z ≥ 0), so if we take x = z², we have found an
x with f(x) = z, so z is in the range, and the range is [0,1).

The Cartesian Plane.
Definition: The perpendicular intersection of two number lines (one horizontal, one vertical),
called the coordinate axes , at the 0 points forms an infinite plane, called the Cartesian Plane,
where the horizontal axis (often called the x-axis) increases from left-to-right, and the vertical axis
(often called the y-axis) increases from bottom-to-top. Every point in the plane is an ordered
pair (x, y) of numbers, where x and y are the values along the x- and y-axis, respectively. The
point (0, 0), where the two axes intersect, is called the origin.

The Cartesian Plane

The Cartesian Plane was invented/discovered by Descartes in the early 17th Century, and
was the foundation for analytic geometry, which allowed the ideas of Greek geometry and European algebra and analysis to combine . It's greatest use is in providing graphical representations of
functions:
Definition: The graph of a function f is the set of points , and is traditionally shown by marking the points on the Cartesian Plane.

Example: Sketch the graph of f(x) = x.
Solution:

Sketch of f(x) = x, with (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 4) marked.

Example: Sketch the graph of f(x) = x².

Solution:

Sketch of f(x) = x².

Lines.