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A Quartic with a thousand roots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2016

John Mills ,
David Tall  and
Michael Wardle
John Mills
Affiliation:
Mathematics Education Research Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
David Tall
Affiliation:
Mathematics Education Research Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
Michael Wardle
Affiliation:
Mathematics Education Research Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
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Extract

In a first year university course on programming and numerical methods (in BBC BASIC), it was decided to give the students the quartic equation:

x4 + 2·88x3 − 19·23x2 − 36·11x + 91·56 = 0

to solve numerically. One root of this equation is an integer—to help the students get started—but a second root is close to the first to make it more interesting. Initially we did not realise quite how interesting this would prove to be.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 74 , Issue 470 , December 1990 , pp. 339 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1990 

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