If the product of all real roots of the polynomial above can be expressed as , what is the value of ?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
A root of the given polynomial is a value of x that makes one of the 999 polynomial factors equal to 0 . Since we are only taking into account real roots, we will figure out which roots are complex by looking at the discriminants of each polynomial.
Δ k = 4 7 2 − 4 k = 2 2 0 9 − 4 k
Whenever Δ k is negative, the quadratic only has complex roots. 4 k > 2 2 0 9 for all k > 5 5 2 , so we can disregard everything beyond k = 5 5 2 .
We will use the quadratic formula:
If x 2 − 4 7 x + k = 0 , then x = 2 4 7 ± 2 2 0 9 − 4 k . Since we are being asked for the product of all of the real roots, let's first take the product of the two roots of each individual polynomial:
2 4 7 + 2 2 0 9 − 4 k ⋅ 2 4 7 − 2 2 0 9 − 4 k = 4 4 7 2 − ( 2 2 0 9 − 4 k ) 2 = 4 2 2 0 9 − 2 2 0 9 + 4 k = k
Now with all of this work out of the way, the product of all roots is ∏ k = 1 5 5 2 k = 5 5 2 !
So if the product of all roots can be expressed as n ! , n = 5 5 2 .