To find the maximum number of mosquitoes, we are going to find the y-coordinate of vertex of our function, but we are going to expand our function:
Now to find the vertex
of our quadratic, we are going to use the vertex formula. For a quadratic function of the form
, its vertex
is given by the formula
and
.
We can infer from our function that
and
, so lets replace those values in our formula:
The vertex
of our function is
, so the y-coordinate of the vertex is 4.
Since the y-coordinate of the vertex is the maximum number of mosquitoes, we can conclude that <span>he maximum possible number of mosquitoes is
4.</span>