Find all possible solutions:
P=(x-1)*(x-2)*(x-4)*(x-8) =ax^2
Solve to get (x,y) for P(a)
Evaluate:
i. (x,y) for a=7 (original version)
ii. for a=4 (more friendly results!)
Credit: Valery Volkov
(In reply to
answer by Ady TZIDON)
As I recall, the 'y' did not pop up until after the edits pertaining to 7x^2 yielding an 'ugly' answer (I suggested 10x^2). I can't speak as to what happened between that time and the problem going live, as I was not active for those few days. Likely that whoever pushed it saw the puzzle friendly edits and didn't look further.
In any case the original motivation for such an edit was that this kind of problem routinely shows up in math competitions or presented as a challenge problem. But those sort of problems are often crafted to not have ugly messy answers with the goal being to show the trick that makes the problem readily doable and have a clean resolution.
re: answer
