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You just had to make me become a user didnt you -.-

 

Anyways, my question:

According to the fundamental theorem of algebra, this equation has two solutions:

X2=0

 

are (0+0i) and (0-0i) different?

 Dec 10, 2016
 #1
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No they are the same.  The roots don't have to be different! You can have repeated roots.

 Dec 10, 2016
 #2
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Then why does the FTOA that every degree n polynomial has exactly n roots?

 

Shouldnt someone change it to "Every degree n polynomial has a maximum of n different roots"?

Ehrlich  Dec 10, 2016
 #3
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Because it isn't true that every polynomial of degree n has n different roots.  They have n roots, some of which might be repeated.

 

 I guess the reason the FTOA specifies it in this way is so that there is no need to include an extra statement for those cases where there are repeated roots.  There might be a deeper mathematical reason, but, if so, I'm not aware of it.

Alan  Dec 10, 2016
 #4
avatar+33603 
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I guess that just saying "a maximum of n roots" isn't as useful in advanced analysis.

Alan  Dec 10, 2016

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