Calculus For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Differentiation Rules — Yeah, Man, It Rules

In This Chapter

Learning the rules whether you like it or not — sorry buddy, but those are the rules

Mastering the basic differentiation rules and graduating to expert rules

Figuring out implicit differentiation

Using logarithms in differentiation

Differentiating inverse functions

Chapter 9 gives you the basic idea of what a derivative is — it’s just a rate like speed and it’s simply the slope of a function. It’s important that you have a solid, intuitive grasp of these fundamental ideas.

You also now know the mathematical foundation of the derivative and its technical definition involving the limit of the difference quotient. Now, I’m going to be forever banned from the Royal Order of Pythagoras for saying this, but, to be perfectly candid, you can basically forget that limit stuff — except that you need to know it for your final — because in this chapter I give you shortcut techniques for finding derivatives that avoid the ...