Summary of factoring techniques

Here are the steps for factoring polynomials in Beginning Algebra: These techniques will work for all polynomials up to degree 2 and for some polynomials of higher degree.

For definiteness, here are the conditions that must be met for a polynomial (with rational coefficients) to be completely factored:

The last of these is the one that can be hard to check and may require fancy techniques to fix. (A non-constant polynomial that is not the product of two non-constant polynomials is called prime.)
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