Completing the Square
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Completing the square of a quadratic function is useful for solving the equation
, for plotting the graph of the function, or for finding the center of the circle (or other conic section) that is the graph of
.
Contributed by: George Beck (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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In calculus, completing the square lets you use substitution to change integrals involving quadratics to some standard form. For example,
and
or
.
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