That's, essentially, big O/small o notation. It's extremely useful for visualising behaviours of all sorts of things, though, for some reason, it's mostly talked explicitly about by CS people. For example, f(x) = x + exp(-x) could be considered as two cases, one for x ≥ 0 (where exp(-x) contributes increasingly less the larger the x) and x < 0 (where behaviour is dominated by exp(-x)). Additionally, it means that regardless of what non-zero constants multiply those expressions (be mindful of the sign), big picture, the behaviour won't change. And, yes, despite looking like handwaving difficulties away, it's actually a formal way of simplifying, discussing and solving problems.Next up, figure out which terms to "eliminate" to get an expression for x as q gets very large or small (but not taking an actual limit!?)
If all the coefficients are integers, as it is the case here, rational root theorem and Horner's method might be enough to do it fast. Though, Cardano's method is a much more general way of solving cubics and worth learning at some point.And hOW the fuck am I supposed to factor cubic equations? Guess?
