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Notes On Implicit Differentiation

1) Implicit differentiation allows you to take the derivative of functions defined implicitly through an equation involving x and y, by differentiating both sides with respect to x and treating y as a function of x. 2) You can use implicit differentiation to find the derivative (y') and second derivative (y'') of curves. 3) The derivatives of inverse trigonometric functions are 1/√(1-x^2) for sin^-1, cos^-1 and 1/(1+x^2) for tan^-1, with co-functions having negative derivatives.

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88 views4 pages

Notes On Implicit Differentiation

1) Implicit differentiation allows you to take the derivative of functions defined implicitly through an equation involving x and y, by differentiating both sides with respect to x and treating y as a function of x. 2) You can use implicit differentiation to find the derivative (y') and second derivative (y'') of curves. 3) The derivatives of inverse trigonometric functions are 1/√(1-x^2) for sin^-1, cos^-1 and 1/(1+x^2) for tan^-1, with co-functions having negative derivatives.

Uploaded by

hw0870410
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Section 3.

5 - Implicit Differentiation (and Derivatives of Inverse


Trig Functions)
Example 1:
Compute y 0 for a point on the circle
x2 + y 2 = 1.

What if we can’t solve for y in terms of x?

Example 2:
Compute y 0 for a point on the curve given by

x3 + xy + y 3 = 3.

Implicit Differentiation:
When we want to compute y 0 where y is given implicitly as a function of x by an equation involving x and
y, we differentiate both sides of the equation using the usual rules of differentiation. However, we keep in
mind that y = f (x) so its derivative is y 0 and use the chain rule as necessary.

Example 3:
Compute y 0 for a point on the curve given by
1
sin(xy) + = ey
x+y

1
Example 4:
Find the equation of the tangent line to

e4y + cos(3xy) + x2 = 6

at the point (2, 0).

Can we also compute y 00 ? Remember the importance of y 00 : It tells us how y 0 (slopes) are changing so
gives us the shape of the graph.

Example 5:
Compute y 00 if
2xy 2 + 3x2 = 5.

Example 6:
Compute the value of y 00 at the point (1, 1) if

5x2 + 3xy + 7y 3 = 15.

2
Application: Derivatives of the Inverse Trigonometric Functions
We usually use these three inverse trig functions:
d d d
sin−1 x = cos−1 x = tan−1 x =
dx dx dx
Alternative notations:

sin−1 x = arcsin x cos−1 x = arccos x tan−1 x = arctan x

Notation warning!
The superscript of −1 is notation for the inverse of a function. For example, we write
x−5
f (x) = 2x + 5 and f −1 (x) =
2
because
f f −1 (x) =


and
f −1 (f (x)) =
However, it is confusing because we also write the (positive integer) powers of trig functions next to their
names as in
(sin x)3 = sin3 x
or as in the very important identity
cos2 x + sin2 x = 1.
So DO NOT CONFUSE
sin−1 x = arcsin x,
the inverse function for sin x with the exponent
1
(sin x)−1 = = csc x.
sin x
Same is true for ALL trigonometric functions.

The other thing you have to remember/review about inverse trigonometric functions is their restrictions
π π
− ≤ sin−1 x ≤
2 2

0 ≤ cos−1 x ≤ π

π π
< tan−1 x <
−
2 2
which you must have seen in a pre-calculus course.

3
Below is one example of how to use sin−1 x. Review others as necessary, when you come across them in
problems. Some will be used when we do parametric curves.

Example 7:
Find all values of x with 0 < x < 10 with
sin x = 0.3.

Now, we can compute their derivatives.

Derivative of sin−1 x

Exercise:
As an exercise with implicit differentiation, follow the same steps above to get
d 1
tan−1 x =
dx 1 + x2

Here are all of them:


d 1 d 1
sin−1 x = √ cos−1 x = − √
dx 1 − x2 dx 1 − x2

d 1 d 1
tan−1 x = cot−1 x = −
dx 1 + x2 dx 1 + x2
d 1 d 1
sec−1 x = √ csc−1 x = − √
dx x x2 − 1 dx x x2 − 1
Note that all the co’s have minus signs in their derivatives.

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