Chapter 3

Differentiation Rules

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 3.4 The Chain Rule

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (1 of 10)
Suppose you are asked to differentiate the function
F x  x 2  1
The differentiation formulas you learned in the previous sections of this chapter
do not enable you to calculate F ( x )
Observe that F is a composite function. In fact, if we let y f u   u and let
u g  x   x 2  1, then we can write y = F(x) = f(g (x)), that is, F f  g.

We know how to differentiate both f and g, so it would be useful to have a rule

that tells us how to find the derivative of F f  g in terms of the derivatives
of f and g.

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (2 of 10)

It turns out that the derivative of the composite function f  g is the product of
the derivatives of f and g. This fact is one of the most important of the
differentiation rules and is called the Chain Rule.
It seems plausible if we interpret derivatives as rates of change. Regard du
dx
dy as the rate of change of y
as the rate of change of u with respect to x,
du
dy as the rate of change of y with respect to x.
with respect to u, and
dx
If u changes twice as fast as x and y changes three times as fast as u, then it
seems reasonable that y changes six times as fast as x, and so we expect that

dy dy du

dx du dx
Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (3 of 10)
The Chain Rule If g is differentiable at x and f is differentiable at g(x), then
the composite function F f  g defined by F(x) = f(g(x)) is differentiable at x
and F  is given by the product
F x  f g x  g x 

In Leibniz notation, if y = f(u) and u = g(x) are both differentiable functions,

then

dy dy du

dx du dx

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The Chain Rule (4 of 10)
The Chain Rule can be written either in the prime notation
2 f  g  x  f g x  g x 
or, if y = f (u) and u = g(x), in Leibniz notation:
dy dy du
3 
dx du dx
dy du
Equation 3 is easy to remember because if and were quotients, then
du dx
we could cancel du.
du
Remember, however, that du has not been defined and dx should not be
thought of as an actual quotient.

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Example 1
Find F(x) if F x   x 2  1.
Solution 1:
(Using Equation 2): We have expressed F as F  x  f  g  f g x  where
f u  and g  x =x 2  1.

Since 1
1
1
f u   u
 2  and g x  2 x
2 2 u

we have F x  f g x  g x 

1 x
 2 x 
2 x2 1 x2 1
Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Example 1 – Solution 2
(Using Equation 3): If we let u  x 2  1 and y  u , then
dy du
F x  
du dx
1
 2x 
2 u
1

2
2x 
2 x 1
x

x2  1

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (5 of 10)
dy
When using Formula 3 we should bear in mind that refers to the derivative
dx
of y when y is considered as a function of x (called the derivative of y with
dy
respect to x), whereas refers to the derivative of y when considered as
du
a function of u (the derivative of y with respect to u). For instance, in Example

1, y can be considered as a function of x  y  x 2  1 and also as a function of

u y u . 
Note that
dy x dy 1
F x   whereas f u  
dx x2  1 du 2 u

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (6 of 10)
In general, if y = sin u, where u is a differentiable function of x, then, by the
Chain Rule,
dy dy du du
 cos u
dx du dx dx

Thus

d du
sin u  cos u
dx dx

In a similar fashion, all of the formulas for differentiating trigonometric functions

can be combined with the Chain Rule.

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (7 of 10)
Let’s make explicit the special case of the Chain Rule where the outer function f is a
power function.
If y   g  x  , then we can write y f u  u
n n
where u = g (x). By using the
Chain Rule and then the Power Rule, we get
dy dy du n  1 du n 1
 nu n  g x  g x 
dx du dx dx
4 The Power Rule Combined with the Chain Rule If n is any real number
and u = g(x) is differentiable, then
d n du
dx
 
u nu n  1
dx

Alternatively, d n n 1
 g x  n  g x  g x 
dx
Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Example 3

 
100
3
Differentiate y  x  1 .

Solution:
Taking u g  x   x 3  1 and n = 100 in (4), we have
dy d
 
100
3
 x 1
dx dx
d
   
99
3
 100 x  1 x3  1
dx
 
99
3
 100 x  1 3 x 2

x 
99
2 3
 300 x 1

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (8 of 10)
We can use the Chain Rule to differentiate an exponential function with any
base b > 0. Recall that a bln b . So

 
x
e
x In b In b x
b e

and the Chain Rule gives

d
dx
 
bx 
dx
e 
d ln b x
e 
ln b x d
dx
ln b  x
e
ln b x
 ln b b x ln b
because ln b is a constant. So we have the formula
d
5
dx
 
b x b x ln b

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (9 of 10)
In particular, if b = 2, we get
d x
6
dx
 
2 2 x ln2

We had given the estimate

d x
dx
 
2 0.69 2 x

This is consistent with the exact formula (6) because ln 2 ≈ 0.693147.

The reason for the name “Chain Rule” becomes clear when we make a longer
chain by adding another link.

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Chain Rule (10 of 10)
Suppose that y = f(u), u = g(x), and x = h(t), where f, g, and h are differentiable
functions.
Then, to compute the derivative of y with respect to t, we use the Chain Rule
twice:

dy dy dx dy du dx
 
dt dx dt du dx dt

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
How to Prove the Chain Rule

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
How to Prove the Chain Rule (1 of 2)
We know that if y = f(x) and x changes from a to a + Δx, we defined the
increment of y as
y f a  x   f a 

According to the definition of a derivative, we have

y
lim f a 
x    x

So if we denote by ε the difference between the difference quotient and the

derivative, we obtain
 y 
lim   lim   f a  f a   f a  0
x    x  0  x 
Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
How to Prove the Chain Rule (2 of 2)
But
y
   f a   y f a  x   x
x
If we define ε to be 0 when Δx = 0, then ε becomes a continuous function of Δx.
Thus, for a differentiable function f, we can write

7 y f a  x   where   as x  0

and ε is a continuous function of Δx. This property of differentiable functions is

what enables us to prove the Chain Rule.

Stewart, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 8th Edition. © 2016 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.