I Are Okay at Implicit Differentiation (Now)
Friday, March 14th, 2008Last week I got stuck working on basic differentiation - it was the implicit differentiation that threw me. This sentence in particular:
“In these cases [when an equation can't be transposed to make y the subject and you are finding the derivative of y with respect to x], y needs to be solved as a function of x”
Now I get it. You have to treat y as if it were x, but a little bit differently. So if:
y = 2y + 5
Instead of saying:
dy/dx = 2 (wrong)
You need to do this:
dy/dx = 2y’
So that problem I couldn’t solve last week - I totally solved it. I smashed the shit out of it. I can’t be bothered getting it and scanning it though, so if you don’t believe me go to hell.
So I said to the guy, “Hey, that’s my daughter!”
Group laughs