Guided Lesson: Factorising Quadratic Expressions

To apply this method, you must first find two numbers a and b such that the sum of the numbers gives you the coefficient of the middle term and the product gives you the product of the coefficients of the first and last term.

Is that sentence freaking you out yet? Let's break it down!

This is a quadratic expression

You need to find 2 numbers, a and b so that:

a+b = 9 and

a*b = 14*1

Now, you split the middle term using the two numbers you found, like so:

Then, we will split the expression into two parts.

What is common in both terms in the 1st bracket?

And what is common in both terms in the second bracket?

You take out what is common outside the bracket on both terms.

You will have got an expression like this:

Now you have two terms, what is common in both terms?

We will take out what is common in both terms and put the remaining in another bracket. What you get now is the final answer