Sunday, June 17, 2007

An Algebra Problem

My second run at puzzling is a test of your ability to expand a polynomial. Sorry for being overly math-y; I'll keep working on ones that are more, well, puzzles.
How many terms are there in the polynomial
(x-a)(x-b)...(x-z)?

3 comments:

anne57 said...

Assuming that the letters are variables that remain in the expansion, each bracketed term adds as many terms as were in the previous polynomial. So with two terms per bracket, and 26 letters in the alphabet: 2^26 = 67108864.

Shuttsie said...

I, on the other hand, will be building a time machine so I can go back to the begining of the semester and study :)

J. Bowman said...

Trick question!
There are no terms; one of the factors is (x - x), so the entire thing evaluates as 0.

I love that one, but it feels just a little evil.