How to Think About the Product and Quotient Rules

Last time, we considered the Chain Rule for derivatives. This time, we’ll look at the product and quotient rules, focusing on how to keep the formulas straight, and make them easier to apply. We’ll look primarily at the quotient rule to start with, and then examine the product rule at the end.

How to Think About the Chain Rule

Having recently helped some students (in person) with the rules of differentiation, I’m reminded to do so here, starting with the chain rule. It is easy to make this topic look harder than it really is; the two main ways to state the rule are often confusing, and different approaches fit different problems. We’ll try …

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Slow and Fast Ways to Solve a Probability Problem

Last week’s discussion reminded me of another question, from July, about a probability problem that was solved in a hard (but educational) way and an easy way. This instance is more extreme, and, due to its length, requires extreme editing in order to fit here.

Why Are There Different Definitions of Range?

A recent question about two interpretations of the range of a data set in statistics leads us into some older questions and some mysteries. Is “range” defined as the interval containing the data, or the difference between largest and smallest values, or 1 more than that? Yes! All three are used, and are useful.

More On Mixing Trig Functions

I’ve had several occasions in face-to-face tutoring lately to refer to a past post on mixing (that is, composition) of trig and inverse trig functions. Several recent questions have touched directly or indirectly on this same general idea and extended it, so I thought I’d post them.

Complex Powers of Complex Numbers

Having looked at issues surrounding powers and roots of complex numbers, including fractional powers, let’s go even further and consider complex powers of complex bases. Things will get a little weird as we work toward \((2+3i)^{3+2i}\)!

Powers of Roots and Roots of Powers

Last time, we looked at two recent questions about combining squares and roots, and implications for the properties of exponents. We didn’t have space for some older questions that we referred to. Here, we will go there.