Math 205 Lecture 13 - Study tips; Implicit Differentiation

Welcome to lecture 13 of Math 205 - Elements of Calculus.

In tonight's lecture we start out by going over some study tips to do well in the class--or any class if a similar construct can be developed. Summary: practice for what you'll be expected to do in a timed/pressured scenario, as efficiently as possible. Specific steps are given for this class.

We then move on to talk about implicit differentiation. This involves finding the derivative for an implicitly defined function (a function whose equation has x's and y's mixed together and you can't solve for the y--or don't want to). This uses the chain rule. At this point, the method of implicit differentiation can be mechanically summarized in the following way: differentiate each term as you usually would, obeying all derivative rules (product rule, quotient rule, chain rule, etc), but every time you differentiate the y, multiply by a y' (or more generally, every time you differentiate the dependent variable, multiply by its prime).

We will pick up next time with a few more examples and then move on to logarithmic differentiation.