You are knitting a blanket. you want the area of the blanket to be 24 ft². you want the length of the blanket to be 2 feet longer than its width. what should the dimensions of the blanket be?

With the facts you got here, you can make the following equation:

x*(x+2)=24

x^2+2x=24
x^2+2x-24=0

Then you can use the following formula (which you might have seen before):
x = (-b +/- sqrt(b^2-4ac))/2a

where
ax^2+bx+c=0

(-2 +/- sqrt(4+96))/2
(-2 +/- 10)/2

x_1 = 4
x_2 = -6

-4x = -3

3 = 4x