Me and My TI-83.

In Fridays class, we explored the different ways of finding derivatives with our handy calculator.

On slide 2, we used the change in y / change in x to find the derivative. That method of course is where we find the slope of two points that are very close to the point we want which is where x =2.

On slide 3, the method we used is the quotient one. All we did with this question was to plug in 3 in x and chose 0.01 as our interval. From there we simplified and got the answer of 0.33. This is my favourite method for some reason. We also saw that we'd get the same answer with using the change in y / change in x way. After plugging in numbers like 2, 3, and 4 we noticed there was a pattern. The derivative for x=2 was .5, x=3 was .33, and x=4 was .25. Therefore, the derivative for ln(x) was 1/x.

From what we learned from Mrs. Karras, not all points are differentiable. The points that aren't are where the graph is....pointy! Like on the slide, the absolute graph is not differentiable at x=0. This is because the tangent slopes are -1 from the one side and 1 on the other side.

The other methods we learned were the dy/dx thing in our calculator and the nderive function in our calcs.

That's pretty muuuch it. *looks at scribe list.* The next scribe will be Yi Nan i suppose. Have fun scribing tomorrow. Now is time for me to enjoy the last hours of my weekend :(