In mathematics, the degree of a polynomial is the highest of the degrees of the polynomial's monomials with non-zero coefficients. The degree of a term is the sum of the exponents of the variables that appear in it, and thus is a non-negative integer. The term order has been used as a synonym of degree but, nowadays, may refer to several other concepts. For example, the polynomial which can also be expressed as has three terms. The first term has a degree of 5, the second term has a degree of 1, and the last term has a degree of 0. Therefore, the polynomial has a degree of 5, which is the highest degree of any term. To determine the degree of a polynomial that is not in standard form, one has to put it first in standard form by expanding the products and combining the like terms; for example is of degree 1, even though each summand has degree 2. However, this is not needed when the polynomial is expressed as a product of polynomials in standard form, because the degree of a product is the sum of the degrees of the factors.
Names of polynomials by degree
The following names are assigned to polynomials according to their degree:
For higher degrees, names have sometimes been proposed, but they are rarely used:
Degree 8 – octic
Degree 9 – nonic
Degree 10 – decic
Names for degree above three are based on Latin ordinal numbers, and end in -ic. This should be distinguished from the names used for the number of variables, the arity, which are based on Latin distributive numbers, and end in -ary. For example, a degree two polynomial in two variables, such as, is called a "binary quadratic": binary due to two variables, quadratic due to degree two. There are also names for the number of terms, which are also based on Latin distributive numbers, ending in -nomial; the common ones are monomial, binomial, and trinomial; thus is a "binary quadratic binomial".
The canonical forms of the three examples above are:
for, after reordering, ;
for, after multiplying out and collecting terms of the same degree, ;
for, in which the two terms of degree 8 cancel,.
Behavior under polynomial operations
The degree of the sum, the product or the composition of two polynomials is strongly related to the degree of the input polynomials.
Addition
The degree of the sum of two polynomials is less than or equal to the greater of their degrees; the equality always holds when the degrees of the polynomials are different i.e. E.g.
The degree of is 3. Note that 3 ≤ max
The degree of is 2. Note that 2 ≤ max
Scalar multiplication
The degree of the product of a polynomial by a non-zero scalar is equal to the degree of the polynomial, i.e. E.g.
The degree of the zero polynomial is either left undefined, or is defined to be negative. Like any constant value, the value 0 can be considered as a polynomial, called the zero polynomial. It has no nonzero terms, and so, strictly speaking, it has no degree either. As such, its degree is undefined. The propositions for the degree of sums and products of polynomials in the above section do not apply if any of the polynomials involved is the zero polynomial. It is convenient, however, to define the degree of the zero polynomial to be negative infinity, and introduce the arithmetic rules and These examples illustrate how this extension satisfies the [|behavior rules] above:
The degree of the sum is 3. This satisfies the expected behavior, which is that.
The degree of the difference is. This satisfies the expected behavior, which is that.
The degree of the product is. This satisfies the expected behavior, which is that.
Computed from the function values
A number of formulae exist which will evaluate the degree of a polynomial functionf. One based on asymptotic analysis is this is the exact counterpart of the method of estimating the slope in a log–log plot. This formula generalizes the concept of degree to some functions that are not polynomials. For example:
The degree of the multiplicative inverse,, is −1.
The degree of the square root,, is 1/2.
The degree of the logarithm,, is 0.
The degree of the exponential function,, is
Note that the formula also gives sensible results for many combinations of such functions, e.g., the degree of is. Another formula to compute the degree of f from its values is this second formula follows from applying L'Hôpital's rule to the first formula. Intuitively though, it is more about exhibiting the degree d as the extra constant factor in the derivative of. A more fine grained description of the asymptotics of a function can be had by using big O notation. In the analysis of algorithms, it is for example often relevant to distinguish between the growth rates of and, which would both come out as having the same degree according to the above formulae.
Extension to polynomials with two or more variables
For polynomials in two or more variables, the degree of a term is the sum of the exponents of the variables in the term; the degree of the polynomial is again the maximum of the degrees of all terms in the polynomial. For example, the polynomial x2y2 + 3x3 + 4y has degree 4, the same degree as the term x2y2. However, a polynomial in variables x and y, is a polynomial in x with coefficients which are polynomials in y, and also a polynomial in y with coefficients which are polynomials in x. The polynomial has degree 3 in x and degree 2 in y.
Given a ring R, the polynomial ringR is the set of all polynomials in x that have coefficients in R. In the special case that R is also a field, the polynomial ring R is a principal ideal domain and, more importantly to our discussion here, a Euclidean domain. It can be shown that the degree of a polynomial over a field satisfies all of the requirements of the norm function in the euclidean domain. That is, given two polynomials f and g, the degree of the product f'g must be larger than both the degrees of f and g individually. In fact, something stronger holds: For an example of why the degree function may fail over a ring that is not a field, take the following example. Let R =, the ring of integersmodulo 4. This ring is not a field because 2 × 2 = 4 ≡ 0. Therefore, let f = g = 2x + 1. Then, f'g = 4x2 + 4x + 1 = 1. Thus deg = 0 which is not greater than the degrees of f and g. Since the norm function is not defined for the zero element of the ring, we consider the degree of the polynomial f = 0 to also be undefined so that it follows the rules of a norm in a Euclidean domain.
