Essay talk:Polynomials

Trainwreck
There are some problems here (topicality aside). For starters, "There's this called the 'general form of a polynomial', which is Ax2+Bx+C." isn't a correct definition -- this is only for quadratic polynomials! You yourself deal with polynomials of degree greater than two later in the essay, though the "solving" section works only with quadratics. "FOIL" as it's usually understood only multiplies two binomials. "OK, lets say you have X2+2X+1, and you want to know what you needed to get that. Well, that's called 'solving'" makes no sense -- what you are setting out to solve here is x^2+2x+1 = 0 -- the = 0 being key. There is no "always works, but frustrating to use" method for finding the roots of a polynomial; the quadratic formula only works for quadratics, and there is nothing similar for quintics and above, by Abel's theorem. Anyway the internet already has plenty of competent expositions of working with polynomials so I don't feel like reading the rest. Read the Wiki article, then finish writing this!
 * Meh. I'm still working on it, as you can see. The reason I'm writing this rather then just letting the wikipedia article exist is because the wikipedia article is pretty technical including terms that a person who has just taken college algebra wouldn't know or remember. I'm trying to keep this at a level most people can understand. --Just relax, and stay funny (talk) 23:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)