Talk:Quadratic formula

Why is "The" included in the title of this article? It seems no more sensible than having the Pythagorean Theorem article be titled The Pythagorean Theorem. Foxtrot 17:35, 8 June 2008 (EDT)

Solution is nonreal or decimal

I can appreciate the recent change to remove reference to "guesswork", but, as it stands now, the article says that which method one should use (factoring vs. the formula) depends on what the final answer is. Until you have solved it, you therefore don't know what method to use! Please try to find a better way of saying what the pros and cons of the two methods are. By the way, the phrase "the solutions are ... decimal" is somewhat archaic. We know that what you mean is that the solutions would have to be written with a decimal point and digits to the right of the decimal point, but saying "non-integer" would be a more straightforward and precise way to say that. SamHB 16:09, 12 February 2011 (EST)

The quartic example

Showing the special case of the reduction of the quartic to a quadratic is a good thing, but the resultant quadratic's roots are identical. It would be better to pick an example in which the quadratic has two nontrivial different roots, and hence the quartic has four nontrivial different roots. This would fit in with the notion that, in the general case, an N^th degree equation has N roots. SamHB 16:09, 12 February 2011 (EST)