Hi, this is alittle late but here is my Precalculus question.
Does the quadratic formula work if we only have two data points and just plug in one as zero or x?
The quadratic formula is what we use to find solutions to an equation of the form a t^2 + b t + c = 0.
I'm going to assume that your question addresses whether we can obtain a quadratic model with just two data points.
Since a quadratic model is of the form y = a t^2 + b t + c, with three parameters a, b and c, we need at least three equations in order to solve for a, b and c and get our model.
So two data points would not be sufficient.
If we happen to know that (0, 0) is a data point, of course, then we could indeed plug in 0 for x and y. We would end up with 0 = c, so we would conclude that our parameter c must be 0.
However unless we have information that tells us that (0, 0) is a data point, we can't use it as such.
Hi, this is alittle late but here is my Precalculus question.
Does the quadratic formula work if we only have two data
points and just plug in one as zero or x?
The quadratic formula is what we use to find solutions to an equation of the form a t^2 + b t + c = 0.
I'm going to assume that your question addresses whether we can obtain a quadratic model with just two data points.
Since a quadratic model is of the form y = a t^2 + b t + c, with three parameters a, b and c, we need at least three equations in order to solve for a, b and c and get our model.
So two data points would not be sufficient.
If we happen to know that (0, 0) is a data point, of course, then we could indeed plug in 0 for x and y. We would end up with 0 = c, so we would conclude that our parameter c must be 0.
However unless we have information that tells us that (0, 0) is a data point, we can't use it as such.