Take shorter and shorter time intervals and draw the lines whose slopes represent average velocity. If those lines’ slopes are approaching a single number, that number represents the instantaneous velocity.
See the graph provided in (a) above. The magenta line has slope equal to the average rate of change of on , while the green line is the tangent line at with slope .
The value is the temperature of the potato in degrees Fahrenheit at time 64, while measures the instantaneous rate of change of the potato’s temperature with respect to time at the instant , and its units are degrees per minute. Because at time the potato’s temperature is increasing at 1.341 degrees per minute, we expect that at , the temperature will be about 1.341 degrees greater than at , or in other words . Similarly, at , two minutes have elapsed from , so we expect an increase of degrees: .
Throughout the time interval , the temperature of the potato is increasing. But as time goes on, the rate at which the temperature is rising appears to be decreasing. That is, while the values of continue to get larger as time progresses, the values of are getting smaller (while still remaining positive). We thus might say that “the temperature of the potato is increasing, but at a decreasing rate.”
When the car is traveling at 90 kilometers per hour, its rate of fuel consumption per kilometer is increasing at a rate of 0.0006 liters per kilometer per kilometer per hour.
At the moment , the temperature of the potato is 251 degrees; its temperature is rising at a rate of 3.85 degrees per minute; and the rate at which the temperature is rising is falling at a rate of 0.119 degrees per minute per minute.
does not have a global minimum; it is unclear (at this point in our work) if increases without bound, so we can’t say for certain whether or not has a global maximum.
If , then the equation has no solution. Hence, whenever , or , it follows that the equation has no solutions , which means that is never zero (indeed, for these -values, is always positive so that is always concave up). On the other hand, if , then , which guarantees that has infinitely many solutions, due to the periodicity of the cosine function. At each such point, changes sign, and therefore has infinitely many inflection points whenever .
To see why can only have a finite number of critical numbers regardless of the value of , consider the equation
,
which implies that . Since , we know that . Once is sufficiently large, we are guaranteed that , which means that for large , and cannot intersect. Moreover, for relatively small values of , the functions and can only intersect finitely many times since oscillates a finite number of times. This is why can only have a finite number of critical numbers, regardless of the value of .
If is large and is close to zero, is relatively large near , and the curve’s slope will quickly approach zero as increases. If is small, the graph is less steep near and its slope goes to zero less quickly as increases.
The absolute minimum time the hiker can achieve is hours, which is attained by hiking about 2.2 km from to and then turning into the woods for the remainder of the trip.
Left endpoint rule results are overestimates; right endpoint rules are underestimates; midpoint rules are overestimates; trapezoid rules are underestimates. Simpson’s rule is exact for both and , while a slight underestimate of .
If we have an existing arrangement and balancing point, moving one of the locations to the left will move the balancing point to the left; similarly, moving one of the locations to the right will move the balancing point to the right. If instead we add weight to an existing location, if that location is left of the balancing point, the balancing point will move left; the behavior is similar if on the right.
Both graphs have a vertical asymptote at and for both graphs, the -axis is a horizontal asymptote. However, the graph of will ’’approach the -axis faster’’ than the graph of .
The area bounded by the graph of , the -axis, and the vertical line is infinite or unbounded. However, The area bounded by the graph of , the -axis, and the vertical line is equal to 2.
If we first think about how is generated for the initial value problem , we see that . Since , we have . From there, we know that is given by . Substituting our earlier result for , we see that . Continuing this process up to , we get
This is precisely the left Riemann sum with five subintervals for the definite integral .
As the degree of the approximation increases, at each fixed -value, the approximation gets better, and in addition the interval of values on which the approximation is within a certain tolderance gets wider.
As the degree of the approximation increases, the accuracy of the approximation improves at each fixed -value and in how large the interval is on which the approximation is accurate.
for about ; for about . While the interval of accuracy gets wider as the degree increases, it seems not to extend past and doesn’t move much to the left.
for roughly ; for about . By moving to , which is further away from the asymptote at , we can get approximations of that seem to be good all the way up to .