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jmc

algebra junior

Problem

Find all roots of the polynomial . Enter your answer as a list of numbers separated by commas. If a root occurs more than once, enter it as many times as its multiplicity.
Solution
By the Rational Root Theorem, any root of the polynomial must divide . Therefore the roots are among the numbers . Since these are only four values, we can try all of them to find that and are roots and and are not.

Since the given polynomial is cubic, it must have three roots. This means that one of or is a root twice (i.e. has multiplicity ). The Factor Theorem tells us that since and are roots of the polynomial, and must be factors of the polynomial. To find which root occurs twice, we can divide by to get .

We can factorise as which means that the root has multiplicity 2. Thus our roots are .
Final answer
-1,3,3