The area of room a is (5x^2 - 7x - 6) ft^2. room b has an area of (8x^2 + 6x - 1) ft^2. if room a is the larger room, how much greater is the area of room a than the area of room b?

About 9.08

You can get this by setting the two equations equal to each other and solving for 0. After doing that you can take the vertex of the new equation which will represent the greatest difference between the two of them. Using that x value, plug into the two original equations and then subtract their values from one and other. 

The answer is the numbers between =5 and 5