Re: TI-M: TIM:Stupid question(?)
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Re: TI-M: TIM:Stupid question(?)
At 08:36 PM 10/26/2000 -0400, you wrote:
> Hi, first I am going to give you a little background. I am in pre-cal,
>and the engineering team at my school. My math teacher is already somewhat
>mad at me for distributing MATH programs of MY design in class, so I am
>almost afraid to ask her this.
> I know that this is a stupid question, but I was wondering how I could
>define a hill that could logically exist (e.g., not 1/x, but maybe a sin
>function) and then get the slope of that hill at any given point. I know
>about derivatives, but they are awfully slow and I am looking for something a
>bit faster.
> I am using a TI-86, and the purpose of this model is to design a
> 'soapbox
>derby' car.
Derivatives are outrageously fast if you know how to do them.
Unfortunately, derivatives aren't covered in precalculus, and that's bad.
If you want, you can do nDer(function,x,point) to find the derivative of a
certain function with respect to x at a given point, but that's slow.
BTW, the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x), and the derivative of cos(x) is
-sin(x) :)
--
//nickd.
<http://nickd.org>: running down the way up
aolim:<BlueCalx84> email:<nickd@nickd.org>
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