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Concept
Algebraic equation
Summary
In mathematics, an algebraic equation or polynomial equation is an equation of the form
where P is a polynomial with coefficients in some field, often the field of the rational numbers. For many authors, the term algebraic equation refers only to univariate equations, that is polynomial equations that involve only one variable. On the other hand, a polynomial equation may involve several variables. In the case of several variables (the multivariate case), the term polynomial equation is usually preferred to algebraic equation.
For example,
is an algebraic equation with integer coefficients and
is a multivariate polynomial equation over the rationals.
Some but not all polynomial equations with rational coefficients have a solution that is an algebraic expression that can be found using a finite number of operations that involve only those same types of coefficients (that is, can be solved algebraically). This can be done for all such equations of degree one, two, three, or four; but for degree five or more it can only be done for some equations, not all. A large amount of research has been devoted to compute efficiently accurate approximations of the real or complex solutions of a univariate algebraic equation (see Root-finding algorithm) and of the common solutions of several multivariate polynomial equations (see System of polynomial equations).
The term "algebraic equation" dates from the time when the main problem of algebra was to solve univariate polynomial equations. This problem was completely solved during the 19th century; see Fundamental theorem of algebra, Abel–Ruffini theorem and Galois theory.
Since then, the scope of algebra has been dramatically enlarged. In particular, it includes the study of equations that involve nth roots and, more generally, algebraic expressions. This makes the term algebraic equation ambiguous outside the context of the old problem. So the term polynomial equation is generally preferred when this ambiguity may occur, specially when considering multivariate equations.
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