2002 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 19
Problem
The graph of the function is shown below. How many solutions does the equation have?
Solution
First of all, note that the equation has two solutions: and .
Given an , let . Obviously, to have , we need to have , and we already know when that happens. In other words, the solutions to are precisely the solutions to ( or ).
Without actually computing the exact values, it is obvious from the graph that the equation has two and has four different solutions, giving us a total of solutions.
See Also
2002 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | |
Preceded by Problem 18 |
Followed by Problem 20 |
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