Announcements

WebWork schedule:

  • Polynomials-Factor Trinomials AC Method – due Tues Feb 27 (Sec 1.2.7)
  • Polynomials-Divide Polynomials – due Thurs Feb 29 (Sec 1.2.5)
  • Rational Expressions-Simplifying – due Thurs Feb 29 (Sec 1.3.2)
  • Expressions-Multiplying and Dividing – due Mon March 4 (also Sec 1.3.2)

We will have a quiz this Wed (Feb 28), which will cover factoring polynomials, including the ac-method (i.e., the material we covered last week).

Topics

We continued with simplifying rational expressions–applying the strategy of factoring the polynomials in the numerator and denominator and then cancelling common factors:

For the example above, we introduced one of the special products–factoring a “difference of two squares”:

We then moved on to multiplying and dividing rational expressions–for which we use the same strategy of factoring and cancelling common factors. We started with a quick review of multiplying and dividing rational numbers:

We went through an example from the textbook:

We also went through some examples from the WebWork:

For dividing, we use “keep-change-flip”:

As you can see, the key to all these exercises is being able to factor polynomials!