Question

What is the equation of the polynomial function?

Answer 1

Answer:

f(x) = (1/2)(x-2)^2(x+1)(x+2)

Step-by-step explanation:

You can determine this by looking at the zeroes of the graph. For any zero that goes through the x-axis, the power of that zero is odd. For any zero that that "bounces" from the x-axis, the power of that zero is even.

Starting from left to right, we can see that the first zero, -2, goes through the x-axis. That means (x+2) is raised to an odd power. The second zero, -1, also goes through, so (x+1) is raised to an odd power. The last zero, 2, bounces off the x-axis, so (x-2) is raised to an even power. The only functions that satisfy this criteria are function 1 and 2.

However, we are not done yet. We need to figure out which multiplier value (1/2, 1/4) is correct. To do this, we plug in 0 for x, since we know that the y-intercept is 4. When we plug in 0, we see that f(0) = 4 for the first function. Therefore, the first function is the answer.

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