How do you know what degree a polynomial is from the graph?

[llamajuice]

Just looking at the graph how do you know what degree the polynomial is?

Something about a maximum of n-1 turns or something?

[sweetnsimple786]

I don't think you can always know, but generally, a line has degree 1, a parabola can have degree 2 [the n-1 turn], cubic can have degree 3 [n-1 turns]

The thing is you can have a quartic that looks like a parabola, I'm pretty sure. But I usually assume what degree it is based on if the extreme ends are pointing in the same direction or not [which will tell you if the function has an odd or even degree] and how many turns it takes, like you said.