I’m kind of confused about these. A site I read said you really only need to do how to do the latter, the former just helps you along. But another site I read said you need both.
Care to clear this up for me?
Some quadratic equations are best solved by factoring. So if you don’t know how to do the former, your ability to answer the quadratic equations questions will be limited.
All quadratics can be solved via the quadratic formula. But for some quadratics, it may be faster and easier trying to factor it first. Of course, quadratics with irrational or nonreal solutions don’t factor over polynomials with integer coefficients, and so it’d be better to use the quadratic formula. But remember the SAT doesn’t test complex numbers.
Also helpful to know are how to find the sum and product of roots of a polynomial.