by RonPurewal Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:06 am
these solutions are good.
to readers of this thread: if you don't understand the derivation of any of the solutions - particularly the work (omitted by the posters) inherent in solving the quadratics - then post back to this thread and i'll give the details.
for statement (2), there are also other solutions besides the substitutions put forth here. for instance, you can also DIVIDE each side of the equation xy^2 = 18 by the corresponding side of the equation xy = -6, giving immediately that y = -3. that's pretty nice.
then, you can just substitute this back into either of the equations (although it's probably easier to use xy = -6), giving x = 2. alternatively, once you get a unique value for y, you can just REALIZE that you're going to get a unique value for x, and therefore a unique value for the quantity that's actually the object of the problem; therefore, you don't actually have to bother carrying out the rest of the solution, since a single value is guaranteed to be sufficient.