Discriminant

Discriminant

The discriminant is the name given to the expression that appears under the square root (radical) sign in the quadratic formula.

Discriminant-1

The discriminant tells you about the “nature” of the roots of a quadratic equation given that a, b and c are rational numbers. It quickly tells you the number of real roots, or in other words, the number of x-intercepts, associated with a quadratic equation.

There are three situations:

Discriminant-2