Happy Halloween! TOO SPOOPY!
For another wonderful week, we continued our journey with derivatives. The end is in sight and that makes me kind of sad. I like derivatives.
Monday we took a test over U substitution, chain rule, and implicit differentiation. I did very well on it; my only issues were stupid math mistakes. I understand the concepts but the easy math screws me over every time. I will just have to triple check!
The new stuff this week sounds uber scary but was actually really easy. The derivatives of inverse trig functions and derivatives of exponential functions is the new stuff. Scary sounding stuff right? Actually, if you memorize the derivatives of sin^-1(x), tan^-1(x), and sec^-1(x) you can find the derivatives of cos^-1(x), cot^-1(x), and csc^-1(x) – you just make the latter negative. When doing these problems, you just plug the junk after the trig function into the x in the derivative and multiply by the derivative of the junk. For the derivatives of exponential functions, you use d/dx(a^x)=a^x(lna) for the derivative. AND the derivative of e^x is e^x. Thank God for the simple stuff in the math universe. I feel pretty confident about topics and I guess that is a good thing.
Then we started the review assignment. Of what I’ve done so far, I feel pretty confident. Again, I need to look back at a few things, but otherwise it’s all good. I guess I will finish the assignment and see which ones I really struggled with and hopefully a refresher of the topic will make it clearer. Next Monday is the big test for derivatives. With 9 sections to cover, it should be a doozy. I’m not too nervous; I’ve done well on the quizzes and that is a confidence booster. I just have to make sure I have all the assignments...
Until next week!
For another wonderful week, we continued our journey with derivatives. The end is in sight and that makes me kind of sad. I like derivatives.
Monday we took a test over U substitution, chain rule, and implicit differentiation. I did very well on it; my only issues were stupid math mistakes. I understand the concepts but the easy math screws me over every time. I will just have to triple check!
The new stuff this week sounds uber scary but was actually really easy. The derivatives of inverse trig functions and derivatives of exponential functions is the new stuff. Scary sounding stuff right? Actually, if you memorize the derivatives of sin^-1(x), tan^-1(x), and sec^-1(x) you can find the derivatives of cos^-1(x), cot^-1(x), and csc^-1(x) – you just make the latter negative. When doing these problems, you just plug the junk after the trig function into the x in the derivative and multiply by the derivative of the junk. For the derivatives of exponential functions, you use d/dx(a^x)=a^x(lna) for the derivative. AND the derivative of e^x is e^x. Thank God for the simple stuff in the math universe. I feel pretty confident about topics and I guess that is a good thing.
Then we started the review assignment. Of what I’ve done so far, I feel pretty confident. Again, I need to look back at a few things, but otherwise it’s all good. I guess I will finish the assignment and see which ones I really struggled with and hopefully a refresher of the topic will make it clearer. Next Monday is the big test for derivatives. With 9 sections to cover, it should be a doozy. I’m not too nervous; I’ve done well on the quizzes and that is a confidence booster. I just have to make sure I have all the assignments...
Until next week!