Sunday, August 23, 2009

we learned a bunch this week like instantaneous speed and average speed and taking the derivative of many equations. i prettty much know how to take derivatives of like easy stuff. this week wasn't as hard as i thought it would be. especially when we first got all those formulas. im getting almost everything but i forget some small part of a problem every once in a while. i sometimes forget to subtract the one when taking the derivative and that makes everything wrong. when product rule and quotient rule come into play i either mess up with my signs or i do something dumb and get the entire thing wrong. i always find myslef messing up foil or something easy and stupid. i can use some help with knowing when to use quotient rule and when not to. when there is like 1/4x^4 i think im doing it right but im not sure. average speed and instantaneous speed is pretty easy once i learned how to do it the fast way. that part of calculus is easy. quotient rule is the most confusing for me with all the algebra involved. i make small mistakes that cost me. if anybody can help me solve some of this i'd appreciate it.

3 comments:

  1. Work on explaining something. Add in example problems. Work on spacing. Try to separate what you understand from what you don't.

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  2. well if you know the quotient rule:

    [(bottom)(derivative of top)] - [(top)(derivative of bottom)]
    ALL OVER
    (bottom)^2

    once you know the fomrula it's easy...
    as for the simple mistakes...i guess all i can say is to double check and don't do it like it's a race..

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  3. For the problem 1/4x^4, you would have to multiply 1/4 by 4, giving you 1x, or x. Then you would subtract 1 from your exponent, giving you 3. Your final answer would be x^3.

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