Posts tagged derivative applications
How to find the marginal cost, marginal revenue, and marginal profit functions

We’ve been looking at physical applications of derivatives, but there are also economics applications. In this lesson, we’ll look at marginal cost, revenue, and profit. But before we jump into these marginal values, let’s look at cost, revenue, and profit in general.

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Critical points and the first derivative test

The optimization process is all about finding a function’s least and greatest values. If we use a calculator to sketch the graph of a function, we can usually spot the least and greatest values. The first part of the optimization investigation is about solving for critical points and then classifying them as representing local or global maxima or minima.

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Solving half-life problems with exponential decay

Growth and decay problems are another common application of derivatives. We actually don’t need to use derivatives in order to solve these problems, but derivatives are used to build the basic growth and decay formulas, which is why we study these applications in this part of calculus.

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Solving vertical motion problems

Vertical motion is any type of upwards or downwards motion that is constant. In a vertical motion problem, you may be asked about instantaneous velocity, and/or average velocity. To solve for instantaneous velocity we will need to take the derivative of our position function.

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