Preface

Here are my online notes for my Algebra course that I teach here at Lamar University, although I
have to admit that its been years since I last taught this course. At this point in my career I
mostly teach Calculus and Differential Equations.
Despite the fact that these are my class notes they should be accessible to anyone wanting to
learn Algebra or needing a refresher in for algebra. Ive tried to make the notes as self contained
as possible and do not reference any book. However, they do assume that youve has some
exposure to the basics of algebra at some point prior to this. While there is some review of
exponents, factoring and graphing it is assumed that not a lot of review will be needed to remind
you how these topics work.
Here are a couple of warnings to my students who may be here to get a copy of what happened on
a day that you missed.
1. Because I wanted to make this a fairly complete set of notes for anyone wanting to learn
algebra I have included some material that I do not usually have time to cover in class
and because this changes from semester to semester it is not noted here. You will need to
find one of your fellow class mates to see if there is something in these notes that wasnt
covered in class.
2. Because I want these notes to provide some more examples for you to read through, I
dont always work the same problems in class as those given in the notes. Likewise, even
if I do work some of the problems in here I may work fewer problems in class than are
presented here.
3. Sometimes questions in class will lead down paths that are not covered here. I try to
anticipate as many of the questions as possible in writing these up, but the reality is that I
cant anticipate all the questions. Sometimes a very good question gets asked in class
that leads to insights that Ive not included here. You should always talk to someone who
was in class on the day you missed and compare these notes to their notes and see what
the differences are.
4. This is somewhat related to the previous three items, but is important enough to merit its
own item. THESE NOTES ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ATTENDING CLASS!!
Using these notes as a substitute for class is liable to get you in trouble. As already noted
not everything in these notes is covered in class and often material or insights not in these
notes is covered in class.

Ellipses
In a previous section we looked at graphing circles and since circles are really special cases of
ellipses weve already got most of the tools under our belts to graph ellipses. All that we really
need here to get us started is then standard form of the ellipse and a little information on how to
interpret it.
Here is the standard form of an ellipse.

( x h)
a2

( y k)
+
b2

=1

Note that the right side MUST be a 1 in order to be in standard form. The point ( h, k ) is called
the center of the ellipse.
To graph the ellipse all that we need are the right most, left most, top most and bottom most
points. Once we have those we can sketch in the ellipse. Here are formulas for finding these
points.

right most point : ( h + a, k )

left most point : ( h a, k )
top most point : ( h, k + b )
bottom most point : ( h, k b )
Note that a is the square root of the number under the x term and is the amount that we move
right and left from the center. Also, b is the square root of the number under the y term and is the
amount that we move up or down from the center.
Lets sketch some graphs.

Example 1 Sketch the graph of each of the following ellipses.

2
2
x + 2) ( y 4)
(
+
= 1 [Solution]
(a)
9
25
x 2 ( y 3)
+
= 1 [Solution]
(b)
49
4
2
2
(c) 4 ( x + 1) + ( y + 3) = 1 [Solution]
2

Solution
(a) So, the center of this ellipse is ( 2, 4 ) and as usual be careful with signs here! Also, we have

a = 3 and b = 5 . So, the points are,

right most point : (1, 4 )

left most point : ( 5, 4 )

top most point : ( 2,9 )
bottom most point : ( 2, 1)

Here is a sketch of this ellipse.

[Return to Problems]

(b) The center for this part is ( 0,3) and we have a = 7 and b = 2 . The points we need are,

right most point : ( 7,3)

left most point : ( 7,3)
top most point : ( 0,5 )
bottom most point : ( 0,1)
Here is the sketch of this ellipse.

[Return to Problems]

(c) Now with this ellipse were going to have to be a little careful as it isnt quite in standard form
yet. Here is the standard form for this ellipse.

( x + 1)
1
4

+ ( y + 3) = 1
2

Note that in order to get the coefficient of 4 in the numerator of the first term we will need to
have a

1
in the denominator. Also, note that we dont even have a fraction for the y term. This
4

implies that there is in fact a 1 in the denominator. We could put this in if it would be helpful to
see what is going on here.

( x + 1)

1
4

( y + 3)
+

=1

So, in this form we can see that the center is ( 1, 3) and that a =

1
and b = 1 . The points for
2

this ellipse are,

right most point : , 3

2

left most point : , 3

2

top most point : ( 1, 2 )

bottom most point : ( 1, 4 )
Here is this ellipse.

[Return to Problems]

Finally, lets address a comment made at the start of this section. We said that circles are really
nothing more than a special case of an ellipse. To see this lets assume that a = b . In this case
we have,

( x h)
a2

( y k)
+
a2

=1

Note that we acknowledged that a = b and used a in both cases. Now if we clear denominators
we get,

( x h) + ( y k )
2

= a2

This is the standard form of a circle with center ( h, k ) and radius a. So, circles really are special
cases of ellipses.