WebWork / Exam #1

The WebWork set “Derivatives – Functions” has been extended to Wednesday (Oct 2), and the next set “Derivatives – Power Rule” is also open (due Mon Oct 7).

We will have our first midterm exam on Wednesday Oct 9. I will be posting a list of review exercises for the exam later this week. In the meantime, please work on the open WebWork sets–working through the WebWork exercises will help you prepare for the exam.

The college is closed Wed Oct 2 – Fri Oct 4, so we do not have class Wednesday Oct 2.

Boardshots

We continued discussing the basic differentiation rules (i.e., rules for finding derivatives) which allow us to calculate derivatives of various functions without having to use the limit definition.

We discussed the Constant Rule, the Sum/Difference Rule, and the Constant Multiple Rule. We explained how these rules allow us to easily and quickly differentiate any polynomial function. Please understand the examples we did in class and which are presented in the textbook (Sec 3.3).

On Monday we will discuss the remaining rules presented in that section (the Product Rule and the Quotient Rule).