Revision as of 13:36, 11 November 2008 by Jarboe (Talk)

  • Find all monic irreducible polynomials of degree 2 over Z3.
x^2 + 1, x^2 + x + 2,x^2 + 2x + 2, this is the answer from the book. But I have no idea what it actually means. Can someone explain? 

-Wooi-Chen Ng


Monic means the leading coefficient is 1. Degree two means the highest power is 2. And irreducible means it doesn't factor interestingly. So each polynomial has x^2 as the leading term. Then we just add all the possible combinations of linear polynomials in Z3 and see which do not factor.

-Allen

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