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Week 8 Lgs

This document provides information about the learning goals and material for Week 8 of MATH 104, which covers Optimization Problems. [1] The learning goals are to understand optimization as finding the maximum/minimum of a function, set up optimization problems by identifying the objective function and constraints, and use calculus to solve such problems while considering all constraints. [2] Students are advised to practice problems from easier to harder, emphasize how all constraints are used, and show that critical points found are absolute extrema through techniques like the extreme value theorem.

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44 views2 pages

Week 8 Lgs

This document provides information about the learning goals and material for Week 8 of MATH 104, which covers Optimization Problems. [1] The learning goals are to understand optimization as finding the maximum/minimum of a function, set up optimization problems by identifying the objective function and constraints, and use calculus to solve such problems while considering all constraints. [2] Students are advised to practice problems from easier to harder, emphasize how all constraints are used, and show that critical points found are absolute extrema through techniques like the extreme value theorem.

Uploaded by

Saniya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MATH 104: Week 8 Learning Goals

Optimization Problems
November 4. to November 10, 2020

Learning Goals
We will start to work with Optimization Problems in section 3.5 of the Course Notes. There will be
some extra business related optimization problems posted as well.

Lectures, Readings, Assignments, and Workshops


• Lectures: Lectures relevant to this week are labelled with Week 8 at the beginning of the playlist
title in the Media Gallery. They will appear successively on Wed., Nov. 4th and Friday, Nov.
6th.

• Readings: In the CLP Notes: Chapter 3.5.3 and 3.5.4.

• Problems: We encourage you to do some of the problems in each section as you work through it
to test your understanding of the material. Answers and solutions to the problems are provided
in the text. If the material is new to you, start with the basic problems and work towards more
difficult problems. Even doing a small number of problems while you work through the material
in the text will help build your understanding.

• Webwork Homework: The Webwork assignment on Week 8 material will be part of Webwork
Assignment 7, which opens on Nov. 11th in Week 9.

• Workshop on Week 8 material: There will be no workshops on Week 8 material because


workshops in Week 9 will be cancelled.

The specific learning goals for this section are that by the end of Week 8, you should be able to:

1. interpret the idea of optimization as the procedure used to make a system or a design as ef-
fective or functional as possible, and translate it into a mathematical procedure for finding the
maximum/minimum of a function;

2. set up an optimization problem by identifying the objective function and all appropriate con-
straints; and

3. use calculus to solve optimization problems, and explain how they used the constraints in the
solution process.

Food for Thought As You Study This Week


1. One difficulty many of you may have at first is setting up optimization problems so you correctly
identify the objective function (the function you wish to optimize) and all constraints. You should
take some time to familiarize yourself with the overall mathematical structure of these problems.

2. It is likely best to start with basic examples when studying the material and working through
problems. I suggest working through the exercises from easier to harder problems.
3. Once you have set up the problem, be sure to emphasize how you are using the constraints.
This includes all the constraints. There is a tendency to downplay or forget constraints like, for
example, x ≥ 0 for some quantity x in a problem because we take it for granted. However, you
need to be explicit in how you present this to us in your work, so you should be explicit in how
you state and apply such a constraint. Many of the problems involve using one of the constraints
to eliminate a variable in the problem to reduce it to a single-variable calculus situation.

4. It is important to understand that simply finding critical points is not the end of solving an
optimization problem. You need to show you have found an absolute maximum or minimum in
these problems, and will make use of the extreme-value theorem frequently, and one of the first
or second derivative tests. You will also need to check things like singular points and end points.

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