The best first place to try on general questions like this is google.
You will find many examples, illustrations, discussions, and videos.
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?
3 answers
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.
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.
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!
1 answer