All High School Math Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #2 : Finding Regions Of Concavity And Convexity
When , what is the concavity of the graph of ?
Increasing, concave
Decreasing, concave
Increasing, convex
There is insufficient data to solve.
Decreasing, convex
Increasing, convex
To find the concavity, we need to look at the first and second derivatives at the given point.
To take the first derivative of this equation, use the power rule. The power rule says that we lower the exponent of each variable by one and multiply that number by the original exponent:
Simplify:
Remember that anything to the zero power is equal to one.
The first derivative tells us if the function is increasing or decreasing. Plug in the given point, , to see if the result is positive (i.e. increasing) or negative (i.e. decreasing).
Therefore the function is increasing.
To find out if the function is convex, we need to look at the second derivative evaluated at the same point, , and check if it is positive or negative.
We're going to treat as since anything to the zero power is equal to one.
Notice that since anything times zero is zero.
Plug in our given value:
Since the second derivative is positive, the function is convex.
Therefore, we are looking at a graph that is both increasing and convex at our given point.
Example Question #3 : Finding Regions Of Concavity And Convexity
At the point where , is increasing or decreasing, and is it concave up or down?
Decreasing, concave up
There is no concavity at that point.
Increasing, concave down
Decreasing, concave down
Increasing, concave up
Increasing, concave up
To find if the equation is increasing or decreasing, we need to look at the first derivative. If our result is positive at , then the function is increasing. If it is negative, then the function is decreasing.
To find the first derivative for this problem, we can use the power rule. The power rule states that we lower the exponent of each of the variables by one and multiply by that original exponent.
Remember that anything to the zero power is one.
Plug in our given value.
Is it positive? Yes. Then it is increasing.
To find the concavity, we need to look at the second derivative. If it is positive, then the function is concave up. If it is negative, then the function is concave down.
Repeat the process we used for the first derivative, but use as our expression.
For this problem, we're going to say that since, as stated before, anything to the zero power is one.
Notice that as anything times zero is zero.
As you can see, there is no place for a variable here. It doesn't matter what point we look at, the answer will always be positive. Therefore this graph is always concave up.
This means that at our given point, the graph is increasing and concave up.
Example Question #1 : Finding Derivative At A Point
Find if the function is given by
To find the derivative at , we first take the derivative of . By the derivative rule for logarithms,
Plugging in , we get
Example Question #1 : Finding Derivative At A Point
Find the derivative of the following function at the point .
Use the power rule on each term of the polynomial to get the derivative,
Now we plug in
Example Question #2 : Finding Derivative At A Point
Let . What is ?
We need to find the first derivative of f(x). This will require us to apply both the Product and Chain Rules. When we apply the Product Rule, we obtain:
In order to find the derivative of , we will need to employ the Chain Rule.
We can factor out a 2x to make this a little nicer to look at.
Now we must evaluate the derivative when x = .
The answer is .
Example Question #1 : Finding Derivative Of A Function
What is the first derivative of ?
To find the first derivative for this problem, we can use the power rule. The power rule states that we lower the exponent of each of the variables by one and multiply by that original exponent.
Remember that anything to the zero power is one.
Example Question #2 : Finding Derivative Of A Function
This problem is best solved by using the power rule. For each variable, multiply by the exponent and reduce the exponent by one:
Treat as since anything to the zero power is one.
Remember, anything times zero is zero.
Example Question #3 : Finding Derivatives
Give the average rate of change of the function on the interval .
The average rate of change of on interval is
Substitute:
Example Question #4 : Finding Derivatives
What is the derivative of ?
To solve this problem, we can use the power rule. That means we lower the exponent of the variable by one and multiply the variable by that original exponent.
Remember that anything to the zero power is one.
Example Question #5 : Finding Derivatives
What is the derivative of ?
To solve this problem, we can use the power rule. That means we lower the exponent of the variable by one and multiply the variable by that original exponent.
We're going to treat as , as anything to the zero power is one.
That means this problem will look like this:
Notice that , as anything times zero is zero.
Remember, anything to the zero power is one.