Last time: Section 7.1: exponential functions | Next time: Section 7.3: the natural log |
Today:
Keep the postit note(s) I've attached with your journals, too.
"The final 45 minutes [of class] is for discussion of new ideas. This will generally involve small group work as you work as a team to solve a problem. You will need a notebook (worth 5% of your grade) in which you will take notes on this process. For each entry you should have the following:
What did I get? Not that! It seems that often it involved no actual English sentences, or coherent thoughts. It was just a few scratchings... Some specific problems:
I want to add a requirement for each lab, and it's that you summarize the main point(s) of a lab. If you don't see the main points, then you should certainly ask! Can you go back over your labs and see the main point(s), the big idea(s)? You should be able to....
Analysis and synthesis are the important buzz words. You're supposed to do some analysis, and that will lead to some synthesis (combining ideas perhaps already in your head).
For example, I never once saw, on any lab, one of my synthetic rules: whenever you have two estimates, you have a third. This is an important rule, and something that I'd like you to remember - but if I don't write it up on the board, you don't write it down. Listen for those important synthetic rules, and come up with some of your own!
An example of a synthetic rule which has made it down on several sheets is units are important. I've written it down, and that helps, but most of you didn't write it down: why not? Don't you agree?
(irrational! the decimal representation doesn't repeat....)
(a differential equation, relating y and dy/dx)
(One of the most important properties of the function )
(this is called an infinite power series -- you can think of an exponential function as a sum of polynomial functions of higher and higher degree, going on forever! No wonder exponentials grow faster than any polynomial....)
Now, there's got to be one base () such that the slope of the graph at 0 is exactly 1 -- and that base is e! That's the miracle....
What questions do you have about this topic, or any of our previous topics?
So how will "one-to-one-ness" be reflected in the derivative? What property must the derivative of a continuous and differentiable function f have in order for the function f to be invertible?
Proof: using the definition of the inverse, and the chain rule.