Hi Melody,
François Viète (Latin: Franciscus Vieta; 1540 – 23 February 1603), Seigneur de la Bigotière, was a French mathematician whose work on new algebra was an important step towards modern algebra, due to its innovative use of letters as parameters in equations
Any general polynomial of degree n
(with the coefficients being real or complex numbers and an ≠ 0) is known by the fundamental theorem of algebra to have n (not necessarily distinct) complex roots x1, x2, ..., xn. Vieta's formulas relate the polynomial's coefficients { ak } to signed sums and products of its roots { xi } as follows:
Equivalently stated, the (n − k)th coefficient an−k is related to a signed sum of all possible subproducts of roots, taken k-at-a-time:
for k = 1, 2, ..., n (where we wrote the indices ik in increasing order to ensure each subproduct of roots is used exactly once).
The left hand sides of Vieta's formulas are the elementary symmetric functions of the roots.
Vieta's formulas applied to quadratic and cubic polynomial:
For the second degree polynomial (quadratic) , roots
of the equation
satisfy
The first of these equations can be used to find the minimum (or maximum) of P. See second order polynomial.
For the cubic polynomial , roots
of the equation
satisfy