Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2019 / Discrete mathematics, continuous mathematics, and probability resit / 1 / b / i / Solution

Not injective; surjective. Indeed, $f(0)=f(-1)=-9$ although $0\ne -1$. This polynomial is continuous, with $f(x)\to -\infty$ as $x\to -\infty$ and $f(x)\to \infty$ as $x\to \infty$. For any prescribed real $y$, choose $a<b$ with $f(a)<y<f(b)$; the intermediate value theorem supplies a preimage between $a$ and $b$.