Quadratics

I have a question which states "use a graphical method to solve a quadratic equation". I thought you drew the graph once you found the Xs not the other way around. Can anyone help? Every site google takes me to seems to say "plug it into your calculator", but I know that calculators just work the Xs by doing the sums in a formula and then drawing it.

I don't know exactly what they want in the question, but if you aren't allowed to use the quadratic formula you could do it by interpolation.  Plot values of the function by hand, see where it goes from positive to negative and estimate the zero crossings by interpolating

On a ti83

graph a function
push the math button
use the zero function
lower bound is below y axis
upper bound is above y axis
the result is the "brute" force solving of the equation