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What are the importance of polynomial and rational functions in real world?

how can we apply these in our daily lives... its application and importance.

Public Comments

1. in finance, they're used to figure out interest on loans in engineering, math is used to make sure stuff works before you start building it in business, they're used to make sales and cost forecasts but if you work in McD, they're no need for them
2. I often use polynomial and rational functions in my software development.
3. They both model processes that occur in reality. ;) Ok, I'll give a specific example. We can bound the running time of algorithms in computer science with different functions (including polynomials) this tells us how fast we can solve a certain type of problem given any input. i.e. a bound of log(x) grows much slower than a bound of 3^x or even just x.
4. When something is thrown into the air it moves in the motion of a parabola, which is a polynomial equation. This same motion applies when an airplane drops supplies to a destination. They need to know exactly when to drop the item and to do so, they solve a polynomial math problem (or, more realistically, a computer solves it and tells them when to drop it).
5. In complex analysis we learn about functions of the form f(x)=(ax+b)/(cx+d), which is a general form of a particular rational function. This type of rational function (called a fractional linear transformation) defines conformal mapping. I saw a seminar recently that used these types of functions to describe the surface of the brain and to look at what happens in different regions. Polynomials are used in different physics formulas. They also pop up in differential equations. Rational functions and polynomials also pop up in many word problems in algebra. The point of the word problems is to help you to organize data and to think things though. So even though you may not see these types of problems everyday does not mean that they do not have a use in your eveyday life and you will be better off for learning about them.
6. Differential equations can be converted to polynomials using Laplace transforms. These polynomials are easier to solve than solving differential equations.