What is the leading term, leading coefficient, and degree of this polynomial $-a + 8a^3 - 4a^7 + 4a^2$ ?

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Answer 1 · 2018-06-30T22:44:54

See below:

Let's rearrange this polynomial to standard form with descending degree. We now have

$-4a^7+8a^3+4a^2-a$

The leading term is simply the first term. We see that this is $-4a^7$ .

The leading coefficient is the number in front of the variable with the highest degree. We see that this is $-4$ .

The degree of a polynomial is simply the sum of the exponents on all terms.

Recall that $a=a^1$ . Summing up the degrees, we get

$7+3+2+1=13$

This is a $13$ th degree polynomial.

Hope this helps!

What is the leading term, leading coefficient, and degree of this polynomial -a + 8a^3 - 4a^7 + 4a^2-a + 8a^3 - 4a^7 + 4a^2?