Carl Perez 12.10.

11 5th Hour

Rene Descartes was born on March 31st, 1596. Descartes was a 17th century philosopher and mathematician who developed a method for finding roots of polynomials and Cartesian geometry, which is commonly taught and used today. Descartes died at the age of 53 on February 11th, 1650. His most notable accomplishment is furthering analytic geometry, which links algebra and Geometry using a plane of coordinates. Equations and points are mapped on the plane by using two variables x and y, forming an ordered pair. X represents the horizontal position of a point or equation, and the y variable represents the vertical position. Things such as distance and angles are found by using equation, most notably the distance formula. This coordinate system is known as the Cartesian coordinate system. In this system, translations, reflections, rotations, and dilations are represented with equations as well. There are four quadrants in the system, 1, 2, 3, and 4. He also developed the rule of signs, which helps find the roots or zeroes of a polynomial. The theorem is stated as The number of positive real roots of a polynomial is bounded by the number of changes of sign in its coefficients, which that the number of sign changes determines how many times the polynomial that is mapped on the coordinate plane will cross the x-axis.