I find it fascinating that once you ask a student to find the equation of the tangent line to a trig-type function (say y = x*sin x) at x = pi, they completely blank out on finding a point on the line. What? I plug in pi? That's outrageous! Whoever heard of such a thing? Craziness. I vow to keep hammering away at equations of tangent lines this year. File...
I hit them with pi's and e's almost from day 1. By the AP exam they are as natural to work with as integers.
ReplyDeletethis derivation is too complicated for students..
ReplyDeletecool math 4 kids