Learning Resources

Shapes of Polynomial Functions

Imaginary roots will always come in pairs. An imaginary root occurs when you attempt to take the square root of a negative number. Since you must take the principal square root as well as the negative square root, you will get two answers; hence the reason for the symbol before the answer. As you know, a quadratic equation has exactly two roots. If one of them is imaginary, then so must be the other one. Thus, you cannot have one imaginary root and one real root.