Review
Sect's 1.11, 4.5-4.8, 5.1-5.3, 5.5, 5.6
MA 160
- What does it mean for a function to be continuous on
a given interval? (give at least 2 answers)
- Name some functions which are continuous and some
which are not continuous at some point.
- What is a limit? How is it different from the function
value at a point? How can you deal with limits of
rational functions? Under what circumstances can
you use l'Hospital's rule?
- What are the basic differentiation rules (formulas)? How do these
change if you replace x with a function of x?
- How do you know when to use each of the rules (formulas)
for differentiation? Compare: power rule vs. exponential functions,
product rule vs. chain rule.
- Try to write each of the differentiation formulas in terms
of the function g(t) instead of f(x).
- How can you check a derivative formula using your calculator?
- What are the steps you use to find the formula for the
line tangent to a curve at a point?
- If the derivative of f(x) is positive over an interval,
what does that tell you about f itself?
- Suppose you want to divide up the x-axis into regions where
f' > 0 and where f' < 0. How do you decide where the
divisions go? How do you decide the sign of f' on
each of the regions?
- If f''(x) is positive over an interval,
what does that tell you about f itself?
- Suppose you want to divide up the x-axis into regions where
f'' > 0 and where f'' < 0. How do you decide where the
divisions go? How do you decide the sign of f'' on
each of the regions?
- Give an example of the graph of
a function f(x) for each of the following scenarios:
- f'(x)>0 and f''(x)>0
- f'(x)>0 and f''(x)<0
- f'(x)<0 and f''(x)>0
- f'(x)<0 and f''(x)<0
- How does implicit differentiation work? Practice by
differentiating
(your answer for dy/dx should
be the formula for the derivative of
.) - What is a critical point?
- What is a local maximum? A local minimum? A global (absolute)
maximum? A global (absolute) minimum? How do you go about
finding these using derivatives? How can you check you answer?
- What is an inflection point? How is it related to the
rate of change of slope?
- Explain three ways to check whether a critical point is a local
maximum/minimum or neither (using the first derivative, the second
derivative, or the function itself).
- Sketch the graph of a function which has a critical point
that is NOT a maximum or a minimum.
- Sketch the graph of a function which has
, but which
does NOT have an inflection point at
. - Suppose we have a point
at which the SLOPE of f
is a maximum. What can we say about
? - When can you have a critical point at which the first
derivative is NOT zero?
- If you have a function of one variable, where do you
look for the global maximum and minimum? Why?
- What are the three questions Tami asks you to answer
when dealing with any optimization (max. or min.) problem?
- What is your game plan for attacking a word problem?
- Suppose you are given the graph of a function $f(x)$ and
a point on the graph. If this point is the ``first guess'',
$x_0$, for Newton's method, show graphically how the
second guess is found.
- Suppose you are trying to find the solution to an equation.
How would you write the equation so that you can use
Newton's method? Once you've written the equation in
the form $F(x)=0$ and made a first guess,
what is the formula for getting the
next guess for the solution?
- In which situations could Newton's method fail? Why?
Besides thinking about the questions above, here are some other
ways to study for the test:
- Review the worksheets covering this material.
- Practice symbolic differentiation using the
random quiz generator (with answers) on
Tami's MA160 web page
(http://www.math.mtu.edu/ trolson/calc1.html).
- Read through your old lab notebooks, concentrating
on the ideas rather than the computations. Ask yourself:
``What did we do here? Why?''
- Review your quizzes on this material.
- Review your homework on this material.
- Read through the examples in the book, and after going
through each try to summarize the procedure or idea
in a few sentences.
- Memorize formulas that you will need.
- Read through the review problems in the book and decide how you
would approach each one.
Next: About this document
Tamara R. Olson
trolson@mtu.edu
Wed Feb 17 14:24:05 EST 1999