What learning math can look like: Sums and products of roots

My older son has been studying properties of quadratic equations in his algebra book. Yesterday we talked a little bit about sums and products of roots and he was a little confused:

 

The confusion doesn’t bother or worry me – learning math is hardly ever a perfect, straight line process.

Today we revisited the topic and took a look at one easier and one more difficult problem.

First – find two numbers whose sum is -3 and have a product equal to -18:

 

Second – find two numbers whose sum is 2 and whose product is also 2:

 

So, hopefully a little bit of a gain in understanding from yesterday to today. Once again, learning math isn’t always a straight line.