Factoring Calculator

Successful factorization of a quadratic. There were two correct factored forms.

Inspiration

I was inspired to do this after realizing in 7th grade, while I was learning to factor quadratics, that there weren't many calculators online to factor quadratics. This was a topic that I struggled with for a bit before finally understanding it, and I realize now, as an avid mathematician, that I can help other people who are having the same issues as I was in 7th grade. At the time, I didn't really understand factoring, but I was afraid to speak out about it, and now, I think that there should be a solution to kids who don't understand this topic.

What it does

People can insert a quadratic equation, and it will output the factored form. The website also contains instructions on how to factor polynomials and multiple resources which explain thoroughly how to factor quadratics with example problems.

How I built it

I used c++ on a website called repl. I used this website because it was the easiest way I found to put c++ code into a website, and I had no clue how to do something like this in any language but c++.

Challenges I ran into

There were many challenges that I ran into, but I think one of the biggest ones was that one of the steps in factoring is that you have to find numbers that add to a sum and multiply to a product. This is normally pretty easy in real life, but I realized there's no way for a computer to just know which numbers add to a number and multiply to another one. The solution I used for this was that the computer would iterate through many numbers and check if those numbers achieve the correct sum/product.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I guess I'm proud of how much I learned to do in a short amount of time, but I think the most important achievement for me was actually trying this out.