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The Remainder Theorem

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The Remainder Theorem

When we divide f(x) by the simple polynomial x−c we get:

f(x) = (x−c)·q(x) + r(x)

x−c is degree 1, so r(x) must have degree 0, so it is just some constant r :

f(x) = (x−c)·q(x) + r

Now see what happens when we have x equal to c:

f(c) =(c−c)·q(c) + r
f(c) =(0)·q(c) + r
f(c) =r

So we get this:

The Remainder Theorem:

When we divide a polynomial f(x) by x−c the remainder is f(c)

So to find the remainder after dividing by x-c we don't need to do any division:

Just calculate f(c).

Let us see that in practice:

Example: The remainder after 2x2−5x−1 is divided by x−3

(Our example from above)

We don't need to divide by (x−3) ... just calculate f(3):

2(3)2−5(3)−1 = 2x9−5x3−1
= 18−15−1
=2

And that is the remainder we got from our calculations above.


We didn't need to do Long Division at all!

Example: The remainder after 2x2−5x−1 is divided by x−5

Same example as above but this time we divide by "x−5"

"c" is 5, so let us check f(5):

2(5)2−5(5)−1 = 2x25−5x5−1
= 50−25−1
= 24

The remainder is 24

Once again ... We didn't need to do Long Division to find that.

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