homework help: who would like to help me with some algebra homework! - Help.com

No, we will not SOLVE it for you.

Why can’t people do their own work?

Leopardfly wrote:
Why can’t people do their own work?

Because they expect the magic website to do it for them…

Well, *I’M* not lazy and I solved it… The answer is obviously 13. ;)

Use a solver: http://www.intmath.com/Basic-algebra/…

Well, you really can’t solve for y without knowing what x is. This equation will change depending on the value of x. The best way to show the answer to this is to graph the equation.

The graph should look like a u-shaped quadratic function going sideways (opening to the right). You could guess and check and make a T-chart or just solve for a few crucial points:

To find where the graph crosses the y-axis (or when x=0), you can take the quadratic formula: (-b (+-) (b^2-4*a*c)^.5) / 2a which is:
y^2-10y+19 = 0
(10 + (100 - 4*19)^.5)/2 & (10 - (100 - 4*19)^.5)/2
(10 + 24^.5)/2 & (10 - 24^.5)/2
5 + 6^.5 & 5 - 6^.5
{7.45) & {2.55}
Looking at this, you could guess that the “point” of the graph will be when y = 5, which will make x = -6.

We can also see that the graph crosses the x-axis by plugging in 0 for y:
(0)^2-10*(0)+19 = 19

So, the graph should basically be a “u shaped” curve opening to the right where it intersects the points (0, 7.45), (-6, 5), (0, 2.55) and (19, 0).