College Algebra & Trigonometry, 2018a

130 CHAPTER 2. POLYNOMIAL AND RATIONAL FUNCTIONS
Another thing to understand about Synthetic Division is that if there is a missing
power of x, then you should include a zero as the coefficient of that power.
Example
Use Synthetic Division to divide:
x 3 +4x − 6
x − 2
Since there is no x 2 term in the polynomial we’re divding into, we’ll enter a zero
as the coefficient for that term:
And then proceed as usual:
2 1 0 4 −6
↓
1
2 1 0 4 −6
↓ 2 4 16
1 2 8 10
So the answer for this problem is x 2 +2x +8 R :10.