post #9

This week in calculus we took our 1st nine weeks exam. We took the multiple choice portion on wednesday and the free response portion on thursday. We had six packets that we worked on for two weeks to help us review all the way up until the exam. It started with chapter 1 and went through chapter 3. It went over everything from finding points of discontinuity of the graph of a limit approaching a number, all the way up to optimization. By the way, after two weeks of confusion and completely failing a quiz, i finally understand optimization! it is so easy! On Friday, we started learning again. We learned implicit derivatives. They are very easy, in fact, the only thing is you MUST know how to simplify correctly. It is just like finding a regular derivative, except instead of only having an x-value in the function, you have both an x-value and y-value.

HOW TO FIND AN IMPLICIT DERIVATIVE:

1. identify whether or not it is an implicit derivative. (does it have an x and y value?)
2. take the derivative of both sides.
3. everytime you take the derivative of a y-value, you must put dy/dx behind it, or y'.
4. solve for dy/dx

Although, for implicit derivatives, sometimes it asks for the slope. If it does, it will give you a point (3,2) with an x & y value. If a point is not given, then an x-value is given, and it will say, find the slope of f(x) @ x=5. In this case, you would plug x into the original f(x) function and sovle for y to get your y-value.


I don't really have any questions this week, the only thing i get confused on is how to find points of inflection and max/mins.