I have decided that calculus isn't too bad...right now. This is definitely my favorite class.
Another week, another few days of derivative fun. We took a quiz over sections 3.3 and 3.5 and I felt really good about it. Even though it took me 30+ minutes to find how the derivative of cotx=-csc^2x, I finally got it and understood how to get it (stupid quotient rule lol). The other problems weren’t too bad in my opinion. Understanding derivatives adds to the fun of calculus.
We added even more knowledge of derivatives and that is great. Finding the composite of functions using the Chain Rule is the new stuff. I thought it was really cool that we discovered how the Chain Rule worked through an activity instead on just writing it on the board and saying “Here it is and this is why it is.” By discovering it ourselves, we really understood what the Chain Rule was and saw how each of the components worked together to get the derivative of composite functions. We discovered that the Chain Rule was (f o g)’= (f’o g) (g’) or in words, take the derivative of the outside function and keep the inside function the same while you multiple that junk by the derivative of the inside function. . Honestly, the Chain Rule was a little confusing, but doing multiple problems definitely helped. I usually hate doing 10,000 math problems on homework but in this case, it was very helpful. I was confused on some of the problems due to not really understanding the Chain Rule, but everything was cleared up once we went over the CCC for 3.5.
I feel really confident about what we are doing. If I make a mistake, it is usually a dumb mistake that can be fixed pretty easily whether it be a simple math mistake or starting the problem wrong. Other than that, I feel golden,
Next is finding the ant derivatives of composite functions and I don’t think that it is as bad as it sounds. But hey, isn’t that math.
Another week, another few days of derivative fun. We took a quiz over sections 3.3 and 3.5 and I felt really good about it. Even though it took me 30+ minutes to find how the derivative of cotx=-csc^2x, I finally got it and understood how to get it (stupid quotient rule lol). The other problems weren’t too bad in my opinion. Understanding derivatives adds to the fun of calculus.
We added even more knowledge of derivatives and that is great. Finding the composite of functions using the Chain Rule is the new stuff. I thought it was really cool that we discovered how the Chain Rule worked through an activity instead on just writing it on the board and saying “Here it is and this is why it is.” By discovering it ourselves, we really understood what the Chain Rule was and saw how each of the components worked together to get the derivative of composite functions. We discovered that the Chain Rule was (f o g)’= (f’o g) (g’) or in words, take the derivative of the outside function and keep the inside function the same while you multiple that junk by the derivative of the inside function. . Honestly, the Chain Rule was a little confusing, but doing multiple problems definitely helped. I usually hate doing 10,000 math problems on homework but in this case, it was very helpful. I was confused on some of the problems due to not really understanding the Chain Rule, but everything was cleared up once we went over the CCC for 3.5.
I feel really confident about what we are doing. If I make a mistake, it is usually a dumb mistake that can be fixed pretty easily whether it be a simple math mistake or starting the problem wrong. Other than that, I feel golden,
Next is finding the ant derivatives of composite functions and I don’t think that it is as bad as it sounds. But hey, isn’t that math.