I have been informed that on March 7th from 6:00am to 6:00pm Central Time Lamar University will be doing some maintenance to replace a faulty UPS component and to do this they will be completely powering down their data center.
Unfortunately, this means that the site will be down during this time. I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
Paul
February 18, 2026
Section 1.4 : Polynomials
10. Perform the indicated operation and identify the degree of the result.
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Start SolutionHere is the operation we’re being asked to perform.
\[6{x^3} - 9{x^2} - 13x - 4 - 3{\left( {{x^2} + 1} \right)^2}\]Now, before we actually do the subtraction we need to actually multiply out the second term before we do the subtraction. Here are the results of all these operations.
\[\begin{align*}6{x^3} - 9{x^2} - 13x - 4 - 3{\left( {{x^2} + 1} \right)^2} & = 6{x^3} - 9{x^2} - 13x - 4 - 3\left( {{x^4} + 2{x^2} + 1} \right)\\ & = 6{x^3} - 9{x^2} - 13x - 4 - 3{x^4} - 6{x^2} - 3\\ & = \require{bbox} \bbox[2pt,border:1px solid black]{{ - 3{x^4} + 6{x^3} - 15{x^2} - 13x - 7}}\end{align*}\] Show Step 2Remember the degree of a polynomial is just the largest exponent in the polynomial and so the degree of the result of this operation is four.