(A new question of the week) Average rate of change is a topic taught in pre-calculus and calculus courses, primarily as preparation for the derivative, though it has more immediate applications. A recent question asked about when the concept is valid, which I found interesting.
(A new question of the week) I recently had a pleasant discussion of factoring, with the kind of student for whom I returned to teaching: one who has been away from math for a while, and with greater maturity has the determination to succeed. We’ll see several examples of the “ac-grouping” method of factoring a …
(A new question of the week) Though students often think piecewise-defined functions are unnatural, they are actually quite common in real life – after all, the world is not all once piece! In particular, they show up in various financial situations, such as taxes and pay rates. Inverses, likewise, are commonly needed in real life, …
(A new question of the week) Some topics are hard to find information about at a basic level, because they are usually dealt with in advanced math courses, and yet the basic ideas can be understood without all the trappings. That is the case for the Affine Tangent Cone, which involves tangents to an algebraic …
(A new question of the week) We’ve looked at domain and range problems before, but some have more interesting details than others. Here is a superficially basic radical function (and the answer is extremely easy when you just use a graphing tool), which raised some interesting issues while solving it algebraically.
(A new question of the week) An interesting question we received in mid-January concerned two implicit derivative problems with an unusual feature: the derivative we are seeking disappears! How do you track down such elusive quarry? Each case is a little different.
(A new question of the week) A couple recent questions centered around how to interpret probability problems, whose wording can often be subtle, and whose solutions require care.
(A new question of the week) The Math Doctors have different levels of knowledge in various fields; I myself tend to focus on topics through calculus, which I know best, and leave the higher-level questions to others who are more recently familiar with them. But sometimes, both here and in my tutoring at a community …
(A new question of the week) I like problems that can be solved in multiple ways, which can train us in seeing the world from different perspectives. Late in November we dealt with a pair of such questions involving angles in star-like figures.
(A new question of the week) Limits can be challenging. They can be even more challenging when they require L’Hôpital’s rule or more advanced methods (Maclaurin series), and then are turned inside-out by asking not for the limit itself, but for parameters that will result in a specified limit, or what values of the limit …