What is the standard form for expanding and simplifying polynomial functions?

[Alain12345]

Today was the second day of school, and my calc teacher gave some review homework. We did problems similar to the ones last year, but I don't remember how to do them. I'm sure it's pretty simple, but I need help anyways :uhh:

It says:

Expand and simplify. Express each equation in standard form:

f(x)= (x-1) (x+3) (x-5)

That's only one of them... I think I'll be able to handle the rest of them if someone can tell me how to do this one. Thanks.

 

[Hootenanny]

The rules of this forum state that you must show some effort before we can help. Do you have any thoughts on what to do?

 

[chroot]

Do you know how to FOIL?

Or, more generally, note that when you have some multiplication like (a + b)(c + d), every term in the first factor {a, b} gets multiplied by every term in the second factor {c, d}:

ab +
ac +
bc +
bd

In an even more general case, if you had an expression like (a + b + c + d)(e + f), you'd again multiply every term in the first factor by every term in the second factor:

ae +
af +
be +
bf +
ce +
cf +
de +
df

- Warren

 

[HallsofIvy]

You might want to start by stating exactly what "standard form" is.