I need help factoring a math problem @here

-x^2 + 5x + 14

(-x - 2)(x - 7)

I have meeting in 3 mins

but that is close

@Warren H What class is that for?

Have you been taught any particular methods for factoring?

@Jacob it's for college learning support math

Not really all I've learned is the "what adds to give us the middle term and multiplies to give us the third term

Okay, well first try writing out this (-x )(x ), think of a few number that multiply to form 14, and see which of those can be added or subtracted to form 5

In this case, 7*2 is 14, and 7-2 is 5. So, you put the 7 and the 2 in those parentheses and change the signs as needed.

Okay

(-x + 7)(x - 2) would create a negative 14, so, although that would work for the 5x, it wouldn't work for the 14. So the right answer is the one Paradigm Slide gave.

Honestly, this is largely just process of elimination, unless someone knows a better way

So before that wouldnt you write it as
-x^2+7x-2x+14? Factor out the -x, but then what happens to the x attached to the 7 and 2?

-x(-x+7)(x-2)(x+14) ?

It would be written out as -x^2-2x+7x-14

@Warren H so if you have (-x-a)(x-b) for some a,b then a*b = 14 and b-a = 5. The solution from inspection is a = 2 and b=7.

@ThisIsChris i imagined completing the square to be something different. iirc completeing the square is transforming a quadratic into the form (ax+b)^2+c

@YourFundamentalTheorum you're right my bad

If any of you nibbas need help with Econ or Statistics Im your guy.

Or business stuff in general.

@Sam Anderson <@&387091385075105804> role'd

<@&387091385075105804> Is anyone who is good that statistics online?

This isn't homework help, I just need to check the math on something and thought that this would be the best place to ask

I'm okay at stats. What's the question?

26% of the US population are immigrants and their children. A typical successful technology startup has 2.09 cofounders. Based on this data alone, how many of these companies would we expect to be founded or co-founded by immigrants or their children? Is it just 26*2.09?

I'm trying to refute the argument that immigrants are uniquely innovative because around 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by an immigrant

This is outside my wheelhouse as far as stats go. I can say that the term "immigrants" is far to vague to make assumptions from.

I get what you're trying to do, I just don't think you have enough data right now

I think that kind of depends. First off, successful startup doesn't necessarily mean fortune 500 company. Even if we were to make that assumption, we don't know exactly what percentage of cofounders are immigrants, because those 40% of the companies could all have more than one, or just one immigrant cofounder

An immigrant from Somalia is going to be very different from an immigrant from Canada.

@Nicholas1166 - NY Is it enough to prove that the statistic given in the argument is meaningless?

To be honest friend, I don't know. That's a subjective question. The main issue is that you're extrapolating the startup company cofounder number onto the fortune 500 companies. If fortune 500 companies had, say, only one founder on average, or ten, it would tremendously disrupt your data

Also, like micbwilli said, immigrant is a very broad term. You could also try splitting up immigrants by national origin, which I think would prove a similar point. If that data isn't available, you might be able to find data on immigrant entrepreneurship pre and post 1965, which would also probably be useful

hmmm

I'm trying to phrase it in a way to sound like I'm not necessarily *disproving* it, I'm just using the available data to show that 40% really isn't that amazing

If I could find the average number of co-founders among Fortune 500 companies, that would solve it pretty easily

Maybe I could mitigate this by finding the average number of co-founders in the top 10 Fortune 500 companies?

Because I'm definitely not sitting here and counting up all 500

Number of founders per company is going to be highly variable