Homework Help Forum: Calculus

Posted by Nikita on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 4:22am.

How do you find factors of this with long division? 2x^3 - 3x^2 + 3x -1 = 0 I just don't know how to do it because there is a coefficient in front of first term.

• Calculus - Reiny, Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:07am

  After you tried ± 1 and that didn't work, you would now try ± 1/2 sure enough, x = 1/2 works (2(1/2)^3 - 3(1/2)^2 + 3(1/2) - 1 = 1/4 - 3/4 + 3/2 - 1 = 0 so (2x - 1) is a factor Now you can do your long division, and get the other factor to be (x^2 - x + 1)

  
  

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