Factoring Polynomials

[eric]

On Dec 18, 9:40 pm, "J. Cliff Dyer" <j... at sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 11:52 -0800, eric wrote:
> > On Dec 18, 8:37 pm, collin.da... at gmail.com wrote:
> > > I am trying to write a simple application to factor polynomials. I
> > > wrote (simple) raw_input lines to collect the a, b, and c values from
> > > the user, but I dont know how to implement the quadratic equation
>
> > > x = (-b +or- (b^2 - 4ac)^1/2) / 2a
>
> > > into python. Any ideas?
>
> > with numpy:
> > from numpy import *
>
> > s=[1,-1]
> > x = -b+s*sqrt( b**2-4*a*c )/(2*a)
>
> > Eric
>
> Without the Nump.
>
> def polynomial(a, b, c):
>     N = ((b**2 - 4*a*c)**.5) / 2*a
>     return (-b + N, -b - N)

there is a little mistake in your formula :

def roots_of(a, b, c):
    N = ((b**2 - 4*a*c)**.5)
    return ((-b + N)/(2*a), (-b - N)/(2*a))

but I stick with numpy, numpy is heavy, but not as much as using a
computer to solve this problem ! And numpy should be standard module
for computer science student !

Eric
http://codeslash.blogspot.com