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27 views

week 1 worksheet answers

Uploaded by

ayushdash78
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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MATH 211 Fall 2024

Week 1 (2 Sep) worksheet Solutions


Note : These solutions may not exactly match yours as numerical values in the problems
are changed for different blocks. You should focus more on how the problem is solved!

1. For what values of a and b does the equation ax = b have a sloution? When a
solution exists, solve for x. Are there any values of a or b for which, the equation has
more than one solution?
Sol. For a ̸= 0, x = ab is the solution, for any b. If a = 0 and b ̸= 0, then there are no
solutions. If both a = 0 and b = 0, then we see that any value of x satisfies 0x = 0, so
in this case there are infinitely many solutions.
2. Find all real solutions of the following quadratic equations.
(a) x2 − 5x + 6 = 0 Sol. x = 2, 3
2
(b) x − 6x + 9 = 0 Sol. x = 3
(c) x2 + x + 1 = 0 Sol. There are no real solutions.
The solutions are obtained by just using the quadratic formula.
For a general quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0, which quantity determines the
number of real roots?
√
2
Sol. From the quadratic formula we know that the solution is given by x = −b± 2a b −4ac
.
Whether this solution is real or not depends on the non-negativity of the quantity
b2 − 4ac. (This quantity is also called the discriminant.)
3. Find all solutions to the system of linear equations
x− y=3
3x + 2y = 6

Sol. From the first equation we get x = y + 3. Substituting it in the second gives,
3(y + 3) + 2y = 6 ⇒ 5y = −3 ⇒ y = − 35 and so x = 3 − 35 = 125 .
4. Find a solutions to the system of linear equations
2x + 3y − z = 0
x − y + 3z = −2
Are there other solutions? How many solutions do you think there are?
Sol. Setting z = 0, gives us a system in two variables, which we can solve like in Q3.
2x + 3y = 0, x − y = −2. Solving we get x = − 65 and y = 45 . This gives us a solution :
x = − 65 , y = 45 , z = 0.
However, as one can see, choosing z = 0 was arbitrary. Had we chosen a different
value we will end up with a slightly different set of equations in x and y, and solving
them will give us another solution. Thus there are infinitely many solutions.
In future we’ll learn how to give a more concrete answer and write all possible solutions.
MATH 211 Fall 2024

5. Find all solutions to the system of linear equations

x− y=2
x + 2y = 5
x − 3y = −1

Sol. Note that any solution to this system should satisfy all three equations, in particular
they have to satisfy the first two. So we can start by solving just the first two equations.
Like in Q3., from the first two equations, we get the solution x = 3 and y = 1 and so
this is the only possible solution. However, we see that this does not satisfy the third
equation, therefore this system does not have a solution.

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