Now we need to move onto something called function notation.  Function notation will be utilized heavily throughout most of remaining section and so it is important to understand it.

Let's start off with the following quadratic equation.

                                                Y= x² - 5x + 3

We can employ a process similar to what we utilized in the earlier set of examples to convince ourselves that it is a function.  As this is a function we will indicate it as follows,

                                  F( x ) = x² - 5x + 3

Thus, we replaced the y with the notation F( x ) . It is read as "f of x".  Note that there is nothing special regarding the f we used here.  We could just have simply used any of the following,

g( x ) = x² - 5x + 3               h( x ) = x² - 5x + 3                   R ( x ) = x² - 5x + 3

The letter we employ does not matter. What is significant is the " ( x ) " part. The letter in the parenthesis have to match the variable utilized on the right side of the equal sign.

It is extremely important to note that f( x ) is in fact nothing more than in reality a fancy way of writing y.

If you remember you may determine that dealing with function notation becomes a little easier.

Also, It is not a multiplication of f by x! It is one of the more common mistakes people make while they first deal with functions. It is just a notation utilized to denote functions.