This is an exploration based on the AP Calculus question 2018 AB 6. I originally posed it for teachers last summer. This will make, I hope, a good review of many of the concepts and techniques students have learned during the year. The exploration, which will take an hour or more, includes these topics: Finding…
Karl Weierstrass (1815 – 1897) was the mathematician who (finally) formalized the definition of continuity. Included in that definition was the epsilon-delta definition of limit. This definition has been pulled out, so to speak, and now is usually presented on its own. So, which came first – continuity or limit? The ideas and situations that…
In an ideal world, I would like to have all students study limits in their pre-calculus course and know all about them when they get to calculus. Certainly, this would be better than teaching how to calculate derivatives in pre-calculus (after all derivatives are calculus, not pre-calculus). Limits are the foundation of the calculus. Continuity,…
In an ideal world, I would like to have all students study limits in their precalculus course and know all about them when they get to calculus. Certainly, this would be better than teaching how to calculate derivatives in precalculus (after all derivatives are calculus, not pre… ). Here are a few of my previous…
Recently there was a discussion on the AP Calculus Community bulletin board regarding whether it was necessary or desirable to have students do curve sketching starting with the equation and ending with a graph with all the appropriate features – increasing/decreasing, concavity, extreme values etc., etc. – included. As this is kind of question has…
Good Question 11 – or not. The question below appears in the 2016 Course and Exam Description (CED) for AP Calculus (CED, p. 54), and has caused some questions since it is not something included in most textbooks and has not appeared on recent exams. The question gives a Riemann sum and asks for the…
Recently, a reader wrote and suggested my post on continuity would be improved if I discussed one-sided continuity. This, along with one-sided differentiability, are today’s topic. The definition of continuity requires that for a function to be continuous at a value x = a in its domain and that both value are finite. That is, the…
Teaching Calculus 