GeoGebra

It is very unfortunate that our technology did not work so that we can get a visual of the derivative. The lesson was to connect the function with its derivative. We are going to start learning rules that will enable us to find the derivative much quicker than using the limit definition of the derivative. Remember, the derivative is a function that tells us the slope of our original function, everywhere. By the end of the week, we will have many skills in our repertoire that will allow us to find the derivative of many complex functions (more than just polynomials).

It is important that you keep GeoGebra at the top of the pile of useful tools (right next to the unit circle). The address for GeoGebra is http://www.geogebra.org/cms/ or you can click the word GeoGebra in the title of the post. At your home, you should be able to Webstart the program and create the worksheet like we tried to in class. This program can help you graph functions, trace the values, and copy the graphs into a document very easily. I suggest that you just play with the program a little.

Since our technology will not work individually, we will work on this tomorrow as a large group to see if we can figure out the derivatives from the tracing of the tangent lines to every point on the function. Hopefully, my computer will be able to complete this task, unlike yours.