On page 44, exercise 2... how would you write a program to find the roots. I did a search on the web for what a root is, its been many decades since any math for me in school, so I totally forgot how to do these. I read you solve the equation for it equaling zero, but none of the descriptions made sense to me in how they were factoring the equation.

Here is what I looked at:
http://www.intmath.com/Equations-of-...tors-Roots.php

I am lost when I read this:
The cubic polynomial f(x) = 4x3 − 3x2 − 25x − 6 has degree 3 (since the highest power of x that appears is 3).

This polynomial can be factored (using Scientific Notebook or similar software) and written as

4x3 − 3x2 − 25x − 6 = (x − 3)(4x + 1)(x + 2)

So we see that a 3rd degree polynomial has 3 roots.

The associated polynomial equation is formed by setting the polynomial equal to zero:

f(x) = 4x3 − 3x2 − 25x − 6 = 0

In factored form, this is:

(x − 3)(4x + 1)(x + 2) = 0 How in the world did they get this from the line above? And how would you even code something to do that?