Question

Given the area of a rectangle is 2x2 - 5x - 12, what is the width if the length is x – 4?​

Answer 1

2x + 3

Explanation:

So, the equation here is:

`(2x^2 - 5x - 12)/(x - 4)`

And so, using this we can set up our synthetic equation using the dividends as the coefficients of the equation, which are 2, -5, and -12; and the divisor 4, which derives from -4.

It's a bit hard to create a table here, so I'll just write out the values and hope you piece it together.

4 | 2 -5 -12

| 2 8 12

2 3 0

Thus, we are given our coefficients for our desired equation.

2x + 3

And we can ascertain this to be the answer by working the converse.

(2x + 3)(x - 4)

2x² - 5x - 12