Week 007 Calculus I - Logarithmic Differentiation
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Paul
August 27, 2020
Section 3-13 : Logarithmic Differentiation
There is one last topic to discuss in this section. Taking the derivatives of some complicated
functions can be simplified by using logarithms. This is called logarithmic differentiation.
It’s easiest to see how this works in an example.
Example 1 Differentiate the function.
5
x
y =
2
(1 − 10x) √x + 2
Show Solution
So, as the first example has shown we can use logarithmic differentiation to avoid using the
product rule and/or quotient rule.
We can also use logarithmic differentiation to differentiate functions in the form.
g(x)
y = (f (x))
Let’s take a quick look at a simple example of this.
Example 2 Differentiate y = x
x
.
Show Solution
Let’s take a look at a more complicated example of this.
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9/4/2020 Calculus I - Logarithmic Differentiation
cos(x)
Example 3 Differentiate y = (1 − 3x) .
Show Solution
We’ll close this section out with a quick recap of all the various ways we’ve seen of differentiating
functions with exponents. It is important to not get all of these confused.
d
b
(a ) = 0 This is a constant
dx
d
n n−1
(x ) = nx Power Rule
dx
d
x x
(a ) = a ln a Derivative of an exponential function
dx
d
x x
(x ) = x (1 + ln x) Logarithmic Differentiation
dx
It is sometimes easy to get these various functions confused and use the wrong rule for
differentiation. Always remember that each rule has very specific rules for where the variable and
constants must be. For example, the Power Rule requires that the base be a variable and the
exponent be a constant, while the exponential function requires exactly the opposite.
If you can keep straight all the rules you can’t go wrong with these.
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