How to Use polynomial in a Sentence

polynomial

1 of 2 noun
  • The reason for this has to do with the new proof about polynomials.
    — Quanta Magazine, 17 Dec. 2018
  • Such polynomials can have roots that are real, or roots that are complex.
    — Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 27 Feb. 2024
  • These kinds of polynomials can sometimes be expressed as sums of squares, too.
    — Kevin Hartnett, WIRED, 26 May 2018
  • The shapes could be defined by polynomials—equations from high school math that sum up sequences of terms.
    — Charlie Wood, WIRED, 3 Nov. 2024
  • In math, sometimes a polynomial, like x2 + y2, works the same way.
    — Quanta Magazine, 9 Nov. 2021
  • These numbers corresponded to how many polynomials there were in each of the first few pieces of the arc space.
    — Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 21 Oct. 2024
  • But x³ − 2 is a degree-three polynomial, so () is not constructible.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 Sep. 2020
  • So algebraic codes are codes that are mostly based on polynomials over finite fields.
    — Quanta Magazine, 7 Aug. 2025
  • The degree of the equation is the highest exponent the polynomial has, in this case 3.
    — Konstantin Kakaes, Quanta Magazine, 13 Apr. 2026
  • This is just one example of what’s called a quadratic polynomial, in which the variable is raised to the second power.
    — Quanta Magazine, 22 Feb. 2021
  • The first is the degree of the polynomial that defines the curve—the higher the degree is, the weaker the statement becomes.
    — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 24 Feb. 2026
  • But this polynomial conveys a lot of information about our problem.
    — Quanta Magazine, 13 Aug. 2019
  • Well, any two quadratic polynomials can only intersect in two points.
    — Quanta Magazine, 7 Aug. 2025
  • That’s what my polynomials were computing.
    — Quanta Magazine, 25 June 2026
  • But there are fast algorithms for factoring large polynomials.
    — Quanta Magazine, 17 Dec. 2018
  • Quadratic equations are polynomials, meaning strings of math terms.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Some polynomials can be factored as the product of smaller polynomials that themselves cannot be factored.
    — Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 May 2024
  • The result, a convoluted polynomial in the variables x and y, has left other researchers scratching their heads.
    — Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 22 Apr. 2026
  • In its traditional form, the two-loop polynomial is hard to compute but topologically rich.
    — Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 22 Apr. 2026
  • In the graph of a cubic polynomial like x3 + 1, one end always goes off to negative infinity.
    — Quanta Magazine, 1 Nov. 2021
  • If that additional point fits your polynomial, then the information is correct.
    — Patrick Honner, Quanta Magazine, 23 Jan. 2023
  • This same distinction between prime and composite applies to polynomials.
    — Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 May 2024
  • Like Reed-Solomon codes, Reed-Muller codes use polynomials with many terms added together to encode long messages.
    — Michael Greshko, Quanta Magazine, 10 Jan. 2024
  • Scholze set himself the task of sorting out why this infinite wraparound construction makes so many problems about p-adic numbers and polynomials easier.
    — Quanta Magazine, 28 June 2016
  • To construct the Alexander polynomial, imagine that at each crossing, there’s an optional down ramp from the overpass to the underpass.
    — Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 22 Apr. 2026
  • That is almost certainly something called Reed-Solomon error correction, which is very pretty stuff based on polynomials.
    — Quanta Magazine, 7 Aug. 2025
  • The decision to settle on a cubic rather than quadratic function or even higher order polynomial is somewhat arbitrary.
    — Korok Ray, Forbes, 13 Oct. 2024
  • Consequently, these three rearrangements are considered to be the symmetries of the polynomial.
    — Quanta Magazine, 3 Aug. 2021
  • Factoring a polynomial means breaking it up into a product of other, simpler polynomials.
    — Alex Stone, Quanta Magazine, 5 June 2023
  • The man addressed me over the cliff of his shoulder—talked down to me in the same condescending way Mister Hughes explained polynomials and hypotenuses.
    — Douglas Stuart, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2020

polynomial

2 of 2 adjective
  • Now make a polynomial that takes points on the grid as inputs.
    — Kevin Hartnett, WIRED, 26 May 2018
  • This, in turn, gives you a straightforward way to compute all the polynomial’s solutions.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Mathematicians want to know how the roots of a polynomial relate to each other.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 May 2020
  • Picture the graph of a polynomial function as a curve floating above the horizontal axis.
    — Quanta Magazine, 1 Nov. 2021
  • For each window size, the whole polynomial order space from one to window size -1 was investigated.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 26 Aug. 2018
  • But more complex knot invariants can assign each knot a number, a polynomial or even a mathematical object called a group.
    — Emma R. Hasson, Scientific American, 3 Oct. 2025
  • For example, an error-correction code processing a stream of numbers might add a polynomial equation on whose graph the numbers all fall.
    — John Horgan, IEEE Spectrum, 27 Apr. 2016
  • The result deals with polynomial equations, which combine variables raised to powers (like y = x or x2 − 3xy = z2).
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Shor proposed a polynomial-time quantum algorithm to solve this factoring problem.
    — Francis Sideco, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2023
  • Galois groups provide a powerful perspective from which to study polynomial equations.
    — Quanta Magazine, 3 Aug. 2021
  • That’s the study of geometric objects defined by solutions to polynomial equations.
    — Stephen Ornes, Discover Magazine, 14 Jan. 2019
  • Scenarios like these can often be distilled into polynomial equations.
    — Kevin Hartnett, WIRED, 26 May 2018
  • Each embedding — a way of associating each point on the sphere to a point within the flag variety — can be defined by a polynomial equation.
    — Konstantin Kakaes, Quanta Magazine, 13 Apr. 2026
  • There are infinitely many types of polynomial equations that mathematicians want to tame.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 12 Dec. 2025
  • In practical terms, an arc space provides an infinite collection of polynomial equations.
    — Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 21 Oct. 2024
  • If someone comes up with an algorithm that can unknot any knot in what’s called polynomial time, that will put the Unknotting Problem fully to rest.
    — Dave Linkletter, Popular Mechanics, 22 July 2022
  • Any degree-1 polynomial equation — that is, any polynomial whose terms are raised to a power of at most 1 — can be parameterized like this.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Over the next millennium, algebra evolved from the study of the nature of solutions to polynomial equations to the study of abstract number systems.
    — Emily Riehl, Scientific American, 17 Sep. 2021
  • In particular, mathematicians often study the roots of these expressions, the values of x that make the polynomial equal zero.
    — Quanta Magazine, 25 May 2021
  • To understand polynomials, mathematicians study their roots, the values of x that make the polynomial equal zero.
    — Quanta Magazine, 21 Apr. 2022
  • In the world of knots, a polynomial converts measurements on a knot into a combination of numbers and variables raised to powers, such as 3x7 + 8.
    — Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, 22 Apr. 2026
  • The short version of the story is that mathematicians found formulas that looked a lot like the quadratic formula for polynomial equations where the highest power of x was three or four.
    — Courtney Gibbons, The Conversation, 15 May 2025
  • In other cases, modular arithmetic can rule out the possibility that a polynomial equation has any whole-number solutions.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 Sep. 2021
  • Calculate a trendline through the polls using various statistical techniques, such as a polynomial trendline or Kalman filter.
    — G. Elliott Morris, ABC News, 28 Jan. 2025
  • The approach that started in 2001 with Spielman and Teng showed how runtimes can be reduced from exponential to polynomial time.
    — Quanta Magazine, 13 Oct. 2025
  • Hewlett-Packard used a brilliant digital imaging technique called polynomial texture mapping for enhancing surface details.
    — Tony Freeth, Scientific American, 15 Dec. 2021
  • Forty years earlier, the mathematician Évariste Galois had used one class of groups to understand the solutions to polynomial equations.
    — Leila Sloman, Quanta Magazine, 3 Dec. 2025
  • The Berlekamp polynomial-factoring algorithm was the first technique for finding solutions for large polynomial equations used in coding.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 23 Sep. 2019
  • These maps, Jain said, entail something akin to a polynomial calculating machine connected to a system of secret lockers containing the values of the variables.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 Nov. 2020
  • Specifically, your function has to be a polynomial—a combination of variables raised to whole-number exponents and multiplied by coefficients.
    — Stephen Ornes, Wired News, 27 Apr. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'polynomial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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