Factorise $f(x) = x^3+4x^2 + 3x$ Not sure if this belongs here, but I'm slowly trudging through my studies for Math 1 and wondered if y'all could give feedback and/or corrections on the following factorisation question:
$$ \text{Factorise}: f(x) = x^3+4x^2+3x $$
Firstly, the GCD of the above is $x$:
$$x(x^2+4x+3)$$
Now take $x^2+4x+3$ and factorise that:
$$ x^2+4x+3 $$
Using the box method, enter the first term $x^2$ into the upper left corner, and the last term $3$ into the lower right corner.
\begin{array}{|c|c|}
 \hline 
    x^2 &   \\ 
 \hline
     & 3 \\ 
\hline
\end{array}
Then find HCF of 3:
$$3\\
1 | 3
$$
Enter the values $1x$ and $3x$ into the other two boxes:
\begin{array}{|c|c|}
 \hline 
    x^2 &  1x \\ 
 \hline
     3x& 3 \\ 
\hline
\end{array}
Now factorise the rows and columns:
$$ x^2 + 1x = x(x+1)\\
x^2 + 3x = x(x+3)\\
1x + 3=1(x+3)\\
3x +3=3(x+3)
 $$
Therefore:
$$x^2+4x+3=(x+1)(x+3)$$
It follows that:
$$f(x) = x^3+4x^2+3x=x(x+1)(x+3)$$
Any feedback on method and/or corrections are gladly accepted! Be gentle, I'm a struggling student you know...

Had never heard of the box method before I saw you use it!
When you got to the part of factoring $x^2 + 4x + 3$ I would go and find the roots of it, because with the roots one can also factor the polynomial.
Upon finding that $-1$ and $-3$ are the roots, I would know $x^2 + 4x + 3 = (x - (-3))(x - (-1)) = (x + 1)(x + 3)$.
This works for a general polynomial of degree $n$. If a $n$-degree polynomial has roots $\lambda_1, \cdots, \lambda_n$, then the polynomial is equal to $(x - \lambda_1)\cdots(x - \lambda_n)$
Of course we not always have access to all the polynomial's roots at once, but we can partially factorise and work our way through that. Let us go through the polynomial $p = x^4 + 3x^3 - x^2 - 3x$.
First obvious thing is that $\lambda_1 = 0$ and thus $p = x^4 + 3x^3 - x^2 - 3x = x(x^3 + 3x^2 - x - 3)$.
Now comes the tricky part. Finding the roots of $p_1 = x^3 + 3x^2 - x - 3$. What I always start by doing is trying some small numbers. Guessing $\lambda_2 = 1$ turns out to be fine and thus we can factor $p_1$. Now there is some polynomial $p_2$ of degree 2 that multiplied by $(x - \lambda_2) = (x - 1)$ gives $x^3 + 3x^2 - x - 3$. To calculate such polynomial I refer you to Ruffini's rule, which is just a faster way to factorize a polynomial when you know one root. Then we get $p_2 = x^2 + 4x + 3$ which was what you factorized above. Since this is a 2nd degree polynomial, we could keep trying to guess roots, use your box method, or using the quadratic formula to find its roots.
