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As we saw in the previous lessons,
when a parabola is in the form
it's pretty easy to graph.
The only problem is... They
usually aren't in this form! (D'oh.)
You might need to graph something like
this:
Well, we can see by the
that this IS a parabola...
and that it will be upside down
But, other than that, it's impossible
to tell.
The
"+ 4x + 1"
part means that there's some sort of shifting going on, but we can't see
what it is.
We'll need some way to get this thing
in our easy graphing form:
The amazing trickery that will get our
desired result is called completing the square. It's not too bad,
once you get used to it.
Continued on the
next
page
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