Post #22?

Calculus Week #22

Okay so this week we didn't have school monday...or wednesday...so not too much happened. We did, however, take two practice AP tests...a calculator and a non-calculator portion.

On behalf on our class, I want to say...don't get discouraged early. Even if you got a 0, there's room for improvement and a lot of these problems were just simple tricks...I hope I can go over a few of the little tricks they keep throwing at us to help us get through this better as a class.

First things first...okay for the limit thing where it's a definition of derivative...I think a lot of us are figuring out that it's definition of a derivative but we are missing a few things about it...for example, if it doesn't have an x in...what that means is they just replaced x with a number. So when you take the derivative of the part behind the negative, you need to put that x back in...then after you take derivative, plug back in your number.

so if it says ln(3 + h) - ln 3 all over h. We know that we need an x...so the thing behind the minus is ln 3. Replace the 3 with an x because that's the only place it can go and you now have ln x to take the derivative of and then plug back in 3. Same thing goes for things like sqrt(3 + h) - sqrt(3) all over h. You would take the derivative of sqrt(x) then plug back in 3. Pretty easy concept--easily missed.

Next thing...don't get confused about what they are asking.. I know a few people and myself included are still giving them x values when they ask us for the value of or absolute max or min. If they say anything like that, they are talking about the y value. They WILL put in the x value in the answer to throw you off so try to catch this.

Also...don't forget your simple horizontal tangent rules because it will be an easy question to immediately get right...

1) if the degree of the top is equal to the degree of the bottom, the asymptote is at y= top/bottom and the limit is the same thing.

2) if the degree of the top is bigger than the degree of the bottom, the asymptote doesn't exist and the limit is infinity

3) if the degree of the top is smaller than the degree of the bottom, the asymptote is at y=0 and the limit is 0.

These are simple rules that should be remembered.

Anyway, that's all for now.