How do you factor the trinomial $5x^2 − 2x − 7$ ?

Question

2882 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2015-12-07T15:56:02

$5x^2-2x-7$ factors to $(5x + 1)(x-7)$

Since both 5 and 7 are prime,
the only options for
$5x^2$ are $1x$ and $5x$ ,

and the only options for
$-7$ are $-1$ and $7$ or $1$ and $-7$

Notice that the middle term is $-2x$ and to get that we would need to have had $5x-7x$ , before simplifying the middle term.

So to get this is a factored form it would be
$(5x - 1)(x+7)$

How do you factor the trinomial 5x^2 − 2x − 75x^2 − 2x − 7?