Dividing Polynomials

A polynomial looks like this:

example of a polynomial this one has 3 terms

Dividing

Sometimes it is easy to didvide a polynomial by splitting it at the "+" and "-" signs, like this (press play):

When I split the polynomail into two parts, I still had to keep the "/3" under each one.

Then the highlighted parts were "reduced" (⁶/₃ = 2 and ³/₃ = 1) to leave the answer of 2x-1

Here is another, slightly more complicated, example:

What happened?

• The 1st Term had x² above and x below, which together becomes just x
• The 2nd Term had x above and below, so they canceled each other out
• We couldn't simplify "¹/_3x" any further.

That is as far as we can get. But the answer is still "simpler"

Now, sometimes it helps to rearrange the top polynomial before dividing, as in this example:

Long Division

If none of those methods work, you may need to use Polynomial Long Division.