What Is Synthetic Division?
Synthetic division is a streamlined way to divide a polynomial by a binomial of the form (x − c), using only the coefficients instead of writing out the full long-division process. It's faster than polynomial long division and is especially useful for testing whether a given value is a root.
Example
Dividing x² − 5x + 6 by (x − 2) using synthetic division gives a quotient of x − 3 with a remainder of 0, confirming that x = 2 is a root of the original polynomial.