How does Synthetic Division for linear divisors $ax + c$ with $a>1$ work

polynomials

I used this guide from Mesa Community College to learn synthetic division. However it does not seem to work if $a>1$ in the divisor $ax + c$.

For example for this problem $\frac{3x^3-5x^2+4x+2}{3x+1}$ from the same website when I expand the solution in the picture below from the website I get $$(3x^2-6x+6) (3x+1) = 9x^3-15x^2+12x+6\neq 3x^3-5x^2+4x+2$$ So are they wrong? How can synthetic division be done correctly for $a>1$? I also noticed that the expanded solution can be divided by three to get the expected polynomial, how can this be integrated into the synthetic division algorithm?

enter image description here

Best Answer

Rewriting $$ \frac{3x^3-5x^2+4x+2}{3x+1}=\frac{3x^3-5x^2+4x+2}{3\left(x+\frac{1}{3}\right)} $$ you see that you have to divide your result, obtained not taking into account the facotor $3$, by $3$.