Harold is tiling a rectangular kitchen floor with an area that is expressed as x2 + 6x + 5. What could the dimensions of the floor be in terms of x?
Because area of a rectangle is length × width, seems for the factors of the trinomial to ?nd out the two dimensions. First check to see if there is a general factor in each of the terms or if it is the difference between two perfect squares, and it is neither of these. The next step would be to factor the trinomial within two binomials. To do this, you will be doing a method that resembles FOIL backwards. (First terms of each binomial multiplied, Outer terms in each multiplied, Inner terms of each multiplied, and Last term of every binomial multiplied.) First results in x2, so the ?rst terms must be (x )(x ); Outer added to the Inner combines to 6x, and the Last is 5, so you required to ?nd out two numbers in which add to generate +6 and multiply to generate +5. These two numbers are +1 and +5; (x + 1)(x + 5).