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The number of prisoners held in federal and state prisons, measured in thousands, can be described by the polynomial -2.06x^2 + 77.82x + 743. The variable x represents the number of years since 1990.

AEstimate the number of prisoners in 1990.

BAccording to the polynomial, by how much did the prison population increase from 2002 to 2007?

I tried putting 1990 in brackets where the x is for part A, but I got a negative number because of the -2.06 and it's not the right answer. Can someone please walk me through the steps?

Verified Answer :

FirstSineOfMadness

The key thing here is that x is the number of years AFTER 1990, therefore for part A plug in 0 to get 743
For part B plug in 12 and 17 then subtract the smaller from larger.
I got 1470.6 for 2007 and 1380.2 for 2002
Subtracting gives 90.4, which rounds to 90 because .4 of a prisoner doesn't make sense

Final answer:
(A) 743
(B) 90
Hope I helped :)

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