The quadratic Formula…
On friday, I had a quiz in one of my math classes. For the sake of annoying the teacher, I used an alternate form of the quadratic formula, given by: x=(2*c)/(-b +- sqrt{b^2 - 4*a*c}). Apparently, the teacher did not know that form ( she does now! ). She never even bothered to look through the work and see that it gave the correct answer… She gave me half credit on 3 questions and accused me of using the sovlve function on my calculator… I didn’t expect to fail the quiz due to my little scheme… but I did. Needless to say, that is being sorted out as she toils through the process of proving that the form of the quadratic formula I used is inded valid. According to mathworld, this form is better than the normal form because in certain cases where b^2 >> 4ac, the standard form can yield an incorrect result for one of the roots.