From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Parabolas

Parabolas

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Parabolas

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- [Instructor] So when we have a quadratic equation and graph it, it usually forms a parabola. In other words, kind of a U shape like this or one that looks like an upside down of U. In this video, we'll cover a couple of parabola basics including the concept of symmetry. I want to just give you the general form of an equation for parabola just so you're somewhat familiar with it. This is not a super common topic to be tested on the g met, but just in case. So C here represents the y intercept so like if C was four, the y intercept would be four. Let's say that that's four. And then, one other thing that you should know that the co-efficient here of the squared term, if this is positive, then the parabola looks like a U and if this was negative, for instance, then it would look like an arch like the one on the right there. I want to cover symmetry for a parabola. Okay, so let's say we had a situation where the geo mets told us that one of the X intercepts of this parabola that I'm…

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