Asked by anon

Hello, I'm studying for a course I will be taking next year. I'll be taking Precalculus and in the syllabus it says we will be learning Quadratic Optimization. What exactly is Quadratic Optimization?
Answered by oobleck
The best first place to try on general questions like this is google.
You will find many examples, illustrations, discussions, and videos.
Answered by Reiny
Quadratic functions have the form y = ax^2 + bx + c
graphically they will be represented by parabolas
A parabola in standard position will have either a maximum or a minimum (that's where the "optimization" part comes in) depending if the parabola opens up or downwards.

That max or min point is called the vertex, and you will spend a lot of time
finding the vertex of a given quadratic, using several different methods.

e.g. y = 2x^2 - 12x + 13 looks like this, and has a vertex at (3,-5)
so it has a minimum value of -5, (can't get any lower than -5)
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y+%3D+2x%5E2+-+12x+%2B+13%2C+

while y = -x^2 - 2x + 7 looks like this, has a vertex at (-1,8) and has a maximum of +8
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y+%3D+-x%5E2+-+2x+%2B+7

fun-section of the course.
Answered by anon
Oh ok, thanks! Yes I tried googling it but for some reason was not able to find much understandable content regarding it. But I found out that it is also called maxima and minima which yielded a lot more results. And thanks Reiny, that makes sense, it's actually easier than I thought!
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