Sunday, January 24, 2010

post 23

This past week in calculus we went over AP tests and learned about slope fields.
The way you do this is to plug the points on the graph that is given into the equation that is given and your answers depend on what lines you draw.
The line you would use for postitive slopes is /
The line you would use for negative slope is \
The line you would use for a zero slope is a horizontal line --
The line you would use for an underfined slope is a vertical line

For old stuff to find critical points is what I am going to talk about. The steps are to:
1. Take the derivative of the equation
2. Set the derivative equal to zero
3. Solve step 2 for x

The way to find where the graph of the equation is concave up and concave down is to:
1. Take the derivative of the original equation
2. Take the derivative of the first derivative
3. Find points of inflection.
4. Set up intervals
5. Use a number in between the two numbers of the interval and plug into the derivative if it is a negative number and if it is a postitive number then it is concave up.

For stuff I am having problems with, is mainly tables and small mental mistakes. Going over the AP tests have helped me a lot. So once I can fix these too i should do a lot better on my tests.

4 comments:

  1. To be honest, the tables were quite confusing to me at first. Once you realize that basically all a table usually is, is a set of points for you to use...it basically becomes the same thing as if looking at a graph with labeled points for you. So you can then do your slope or whatever it is you need.

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  2. tables take common sense, so with your mental mistakes..that's possibly where you found the errors. So, you really need to disect the tables. if you see f(x) you know its a y-coordinate..and the same for x, you know its a x-coordinate.

    Then you just go from there and see what needs to be done!

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  3. for tables:
    if it tells you to find f[2]
    then go to the f column and look under where x=2 then see where the meet
    it's that simple
    just gotta know what it's asking for!

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  4. Tables usually give you everything you need to find, which is probably what is giving you mistakes because you're trying to find what is already given. Just know what you're looking for, whether it is a derivative, an inverse, the original, etc. and disect the table from there.

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