View source for GATE2006 q1 ← GATE2006 q1

Consider the polynomial $p(x) = a_0 + a_1x + a_2x^2 + a_3x^3$ , where $a_i ≠0\; ∀i$. The minimum number of multiplications needed to evaluate $p$ on an input $x$ is:

(A) 3

(B) 4

(C) 6

(D) 9

Solution by Happy Mittal[edit]

We can use just horner's method, according to which, we can write p(x) as :

$$p(x) = a_0 + x(a_1 + x(a_2 + a_3x))$$

As we can see, here we need only three multiplications, so option (A) is correct.

Note that in question paper, $a_3x^2$ is written instead of $a_3x^3$, but for $a_3x^2$, answer is $2$, because we can save one more multiplication between $a_3$ and $x$, but $2$ is not in the options, so I guess question paper had a printing mistake.