Sunday, August 30, 2009

Week #2

Week #2 has finally come to a close and things just got harder. With the introduction of e^u and more complex derivatives, I was actually starting to struggle a little. A good example problem would be y=ln(e^x)

First off one should should identify the steps of your problem. In this case they would be
1. Natural Log
2. e^u

you problem should be 1
--- . (e^x)'
e^x

then you find the derivative of e^x which is e^x . x' (x'=1)

so your final problem should be 1
--- . e^x . 1
e^x

After this you have to simplify algebraically, giving you e^x ,which equals 1.
----
e^x

I still mess up while simplifying because once I get a huge derivative i end up missing a sign or just plain messing up with different rules, for example the log rules. I kept thinking that log1044 cancelled leaving log101. Does anyone have any advice on remembering rules and such. It would be greatly appreciated.

3 comments:

  1. Damn I'm short some words ugh sorry about that

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  2. The only I can tell you is when I'm dealing with logs I just keeping thinking you can ONLY cancell BASES. At least it works for me.

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  3. I used notecards to remember the rules but working problems with the rules you do not know also helps.

    the inverse trig functions are easy to remember because sin and cos are the same with the exception that cos is a -1
    and same goes for tan and cot and sec and csc

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