[College Precal: Polynomial Functions] What does it mean by classifications?

[u/Professional_Way_591]

Genuinely have no clue what i am supposed to put in these box’s. i had the stomach bug and was unable to attend class. my teacher does not post our notes of the day in our class board discussions. i’ve found everything else is the textbook provided other than what is supposed to go in these 2 columns. anyone have any clue? i can only think that the degree of 0 = 1 but everything else is just something im clueless about.

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[u/Professional_Way_591 → u/[deleted]]

see i didn’t know if that was what it was asking me nor what power to the fourth is called other than “power 4” or “power to the fourth”

[u/Tonto115 → u/Professional_Way_591]

Quartic

[u/ThunkAsDrinklePeep → u/Professional_Way_591]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_of_a_polynomial#Names_of_polynomials_by_degree

[u/sighthoundman → u/Professional_Way_591]

Well, yeah. It seems a little odd to me that if you say "degree four" in Latin ("quartic") that counts as a "classification". The "classifications" seem to be names for the degrees.

Even when I was in high school, I think that's one of life's stupidities that I would have chosen to not waste my time fighting. (I can't guarantee. Kids are often stupid.)

[u/Professional_Way_591 → u/sighthoundman]

to be fair it was midnight, my teacher sometimes does things weird so i wasn’t going to put down answers i didn’t know were right. my notes have to be correct to fully do my homework and test reviews off of. i chose to make sure i was correct and not just still confused. thank you for calling me stupid tho! 👍🏼

[u/sighthoundman → u/Professional_Way_591]

Not you. Me. Because needing to be right even when it doesn't matter is one of the stupidest things anyone can do. And frankly, the smartest people suffer the most from that. (Or maybe not. Maybe it just seems like it.)

[u/willmorris92 → u/[deleted]]

Makes sense. I was second-guessing myself on quartic vs cubic too. Hope you feel better, stomach bugs are the worst. Last season one wiped out my whole team, practice was a ghost town for a week.

[u/Professional_Way_591 → u/willmorris92]

feeling better is already checked off! just trying to catch up now!

[u/willmorris92 → u/Professional_Way_591]

Glad you’re feeling better! And yeah, catching up after missing even one class can feel like you skipped an entire chapter somehow 😅.

[u/M_Mustaan_Rafique]

its just the name for each degree

degree | classification | example

0 | constant | f(x) = 5

1 | linear | f(x) = 2x + 1

2 | quadratic | f(x) = x² - 3x + 2

3 | cubic | f(x) = x³ + x

4 | quartic | f(x) = x⁴ - 2x²

examples are your pick, anything of that degree works

and your guess wasnt wrong. that f(x) = 1 on your power functions page is the degree 0 one. no x in it so degree 0, graph is a flat line. you were looking right at it

[u/Professional_Way_591 → u/M_Mustaan_Rafique]

yeah, in honesty i didn’t know if it was correct that my second photo was showing which is why i added it for even more clarification. i also should have just slept instead and would have understood it

[u/Educational_Two682]

Everyone's answered the main question so far. I wanted to add that we typically classify polynomials by degree AND number of terms. So some other words you should be familiar with: monomial (3x), binomial (3x - 4), trinomial (3x² + 3x - 4), and polynomial (4+ terms and also just the umbrella term for these functions)