So I'm trying to factor this : 30w^3 +25w^2-30w
I pulled out the gcf of 5 to get 5w(6w^2 +5w -6)
I don't think I can factor this any further, right?
Sadly, not enough people know about the rational root theorem. It makes factoring so easy. Every time someone posts a factoring question, I always take the opportunity to explain the rational root theorem. It's overkill for quadratics because you can alwys apply the quadratic formula, but for anything higher than quadratics it's indispensable.
We've got this polynomial 6w^2 + 5w - 6. The first coefficient is 6. the factors of 6 are +-1, +-2, +-3, +-6. The last coefficient is -6, and has the same factors.
Any rational root will be of the form (factor of last coefficient) / (factor of first coefficient).
So we need to find all fractions that you can generate as a result of taking the numbers from one set divided by number from another set. Doing this, we get the following:
+-1/6, +-1/3, +-1/2, +-2/3, +-1, +-3/2 +-2, +-6
So that seems like a shitload of possibilites to check, but we can prune alot of the wrong answers easily by plugging in all the integer values.
P(0) = -6
P(1) = 5
We see that the sign of the result changes (from -6 to 5). That's what we're looking for. At this point, you can delete every single possibility from that candidate list that doesn't fall in that range. This means our root has to be between 0 and 1. So it's either 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3.
Use a binary search approach by always choosing a value from the middle of the result set to reduce the posibilities by the most. So let's try 1/2. If you do this you get -2. Now the results are:
P(0) = -6
P(1/2) = -2
P(1) = 5
So the answer is between 1/2 and 1. The only choice remaining is 2/3, which is the root.
This probably sounds complicated, and indeed it is overkill for this particular problem (the quadratic formula is easier). But this is absolutely the best way to factor higher degree polynomials when it's not obvious from inspection what the roots are. For example, here's a polynomial:
x^3 - 4x^2 - 11x + 30
Turns out this is really easy to factor with the RRT. The possibilities are +-1, +-2, +-3, +-5, +-10, +-15, +-30
P(0) > 30
P(1) > 0
P(2) = 0
So 2 is a root. factoring 2 out you get:
(x-2)(x^2-2x-15)
and you can use RRT again or get (x+3)(x-5) by inspection.