A in one is expressed in
standard form when the that form it are arranged in decreasing order. This form can be represented with the following general .
anxn+an−1xn−1+⋯+a1x1+a0x0
In that general expression,
n is a and the
an, an−1, …, a2, a1, a0 are . The following expression written in standard form shows a polynomial with a of
5.
x5−12x4−2x3+8x2+9x+0
It should be noted that coefficients can be zero. In those cases, the corresponding are often omitted, which causes consecutive terms to have that are
not consecutive descending . The following example, in standard form, shows a polynomial with a degree of
4. 3x4−2x2+6x+5⇕3x4+0⋅x3−2x2+6x+5
It can be seen that the
x3-term was omitted, at first. However, if chosen to do so, the polynomial can be expressed in standard form with a coefficient of
0 and the corresponding term.