Skip to main content
OlympiadHQ

Browse · MATH

Print

jmc

algebra senior

Problem

Find if the graph of has a hole at , a vertical asymptote at , no horizontal asymptote, and .
Solution
Factorising the numerator gives us There will only be a hole at if both the numerator and denominator are when . We can see that this is already true for the numerator, hence must have a factor of .

Since there is a vertical asymptote at , . By the Factor theorem, must have a factor of .

Since there is no horizontal asymptote, we know that the degree of must be less than the degree of the numerator. The numerator has a degree of , which means that has degree at most .

Putting all of this together, we have that for some constant . Since , we have . which we can solve to get . Hence, .
Final answer
3(x-2)(x+1)