Math 221 – Exam I (50 minutes) – Friday Feb 22, 2002

Answers
I. (30 points.) Find the indicated derivative.
µ ¶2
x+1 dy
(a) y = . =?
x−1 dx
Answer: By the chain rule and the quotient rule
µ ¶
dy x+1 1(x − 1) − (x + 1)1
=2 · .
dx x−1 (x − 1)2

(This is problem 8 on page 75 of the text.)

t t2 dy
(b) x = and y = . =?
1+t 1+t dx
Answer: By the quotient rule

dx (1 + t) − t 1 dy 2t(1 + t) − t2 t2 + 2t
= 2
= , = =
dt (1 + t) (1 + t)2 dt (1 + t)2 (1 + t)2

so by the chain rule

dy dy/dt
= = t2 + 2t.
dx dx/dt
From x = 1/(1 + t) we get x + tx = t and then t = x/(1 − x) so
µ ¶2 µ ¶
dy x x
= +2 .
dx 1−x 1−x

(This is problem 4 on page 93 of the text.)

dy
(c) y = sec2 5x = (cos 5x)−2 . =?
dx
Answer: By the chain rule
dy d
= −2(cos 5x)−3 cos(5x) = −2(cos 5x)−3 (−5 sin 5x).
dx dx
(This is Example 4 on page 105 of the text.)
Grader’s comments
Some students did not have good understanding of the chain rule and
hence wrote completely wrong answers for (a) and (c). When the chain rule

1
was followed by a non-trivial differentiation as in (a) and (c), many students
failed to use appropriate differentiation rules.
In (b), many students wrote too much which made their work hard to
follow. I was also able to see the fact that they don’t have to simplify their
answers has some undesirable effects:

1. Many people solved for t in x and substituted that to express y in terms

of x and then tried to find dy/dx. But while they were doing that, they
did not simplify anything in the process hence applying the quotient
rule many times inside the quotient rule. It was very hard to follow
and most of those students ended up making mistakes.

2. In some cases, there were obvious cancellations and they just simply
wouldn’t cancel them. Again that made it very hard to follow their
answers. Things like t(−1 · (1 + t−1 )−2 ) or −2(cos5x)−3 (−sin5x · 5) as
final answers were not visually pleasing to see.

I think it’s a good policy that they don’t have to simplify expressions when
there’s absolutely no benefit of doing that. But I think they should simplify
to reasonable extent. I also personally think that they should be capable of
simple algebra.
Lastly, some students wrote −sin in their answer hence exhibited that
they do not have good understanding of cosine or sine functions.
Professor’s response
I have wrestled with the problem of how much simplification and what al-
gebraic skills to require ever since I began teaching calculus over thirty years
ago. My problem is that I don’t know how to word a question which forces
simplification. My current approach is to tell students that they needn’t sim-
plify unless this is necessary to complete the problem, but I certainly do believe
that algebra skills are important. Any ideas?

II. (20 points.) Find an equation for the tangent line to the curve

x2 + xy − y 2 = 1

at the point P0 (2, 3).

Answer: By implicit differentiation
dy dy
2x + y + x − 2y =0
dx dx
2
so
dy 2x + y
= .
dx 2y − x
The slope of the tangent line at P0 is
¯
dy ¯¯ 4+3 7
= =
dx (x,y)=(2,3) 6 − 2
¯ 4

and the equation of the tangent line is

7
y − 3 = (x − 2)
4
(This is Problem 30 on page 83 of the text.)
Grader’s Comments
Students did very well on this problem, almost all of them got 20 or a
little less in case they had an arithmetical or notational mistake. I assigned
10/20 for finding the derivative and 5/10 for each of finding the slope and
the equation. The following error was common: dy/dx = 2x + y + x dy/dx +
2y dy/dx = 0, I took off a point for that.

III. (30 points.) Two functions f and g are inverse functions if the equations
y = f (x) and x = g(y) have the same graph, i.e. if x = g(f (x)) and
y = f (g(y)). What is the inverse function g of the function f (x) = x3 + 1
and what is the derivative of g?
Answer: Since y = x3 + 1 ⇐⇒ x = (y − 1)1/3 The inverse function is
g(y) = (y − 1)1/3 so
(y − 1)−2/3
g 0 (y) = .
3
This is a consequence of the Chain Rule: g(f (x)) = x so g 0 (f (x))f 0 (x) = 1
so if y = f (x), then
1 1 1
g 0 (y) = g 0 (f (x)) = = 2
= .
f 0 (x) 3x 3(y − 1)2/3

(This is Example 3 on page 78.)

Remark. The function g defined by the formula
1
g(y) = (y − 1) 3

3
is the same as the function g defined by the formula
1
g(x) = (x − 1) 3 .

Grader’s Comments
Many students (probably because they were taught to in an earlier course)
immediately went from the equation y = x3 +1 to the equation x = y 3 +1. This
is contrary to the approach of our text book, the wording of the question, and
the approach I took in lecture. After a student writes this the reader cannot
know whether dy/dx means f 0 (x) or g 0 (x). I deducted three points (I think
it is a serious error) and wrote: “Do not write both equations y = x3 + 1
and x = y 3 + 1 in the same problem. y 6= (y 3 + 1)3 + 1.” Anticipating a
general riot, I only deducted one point from the actual score I wrote on the
first page of the exam. It was also common for students to write things like
g 0 (y) = (x−1)−2/3 /3 rather than g 0 (y) = (y−1)−2/3 /3 or g 0 (x) = (x−1)−2/3 /3
indicating that they don’t understand functional notation.

IV. (30 points.) State and prove the formula for the derivative of the
product of two functions. In your proof you may use (without proof) the
limit laws, the theorem that a differentiable function is continuous, and high
school algebra.1
Answer: Suppose that f (x) = u(x)v(x) for all x where u and v are differ-
entiable. Then

f (x) − f (a)
f 0 (a) = lim (definition)
x→a x−a
u(x) · v(x) − u(a) · v(a)
= lim (hypothesis)
x→a x−a
µµ ¶ µ ¶¶
u(x) − u(a) v(x) − v(a)
= lim · v(a) + u(x) · (hsa)
x→a x−a x−a
µ ¶ µ ¶
u(x) − u(a) v(x) − v(a)
= lim · v(a) + u(a) · lim (limit laws)
x→a x−a x→a x−a

= u0 (a)v(a) + v 0 (a)u(a) (definition)

1
This is one of five proofs the students were told to prepare.

4
 (In the fourth step the theorem that a differentiable function is continuous
is also used.)
Grader’s comments
I would say half of the students got the problem essentially correct, even
though it was clear that 90% of the time they just memorized the proof, as
they wrote down exactly what was on the handout. For the rest, some didn’t
bother with the proof and most of them tried to reproduce the proof as well
as they could remember, and the result was typically having an intermediate
step that was completely inconsistent with the rest of the steps, or something
like starting to prove the product rule and by some mysterious algebra ending
up with the quotient rule, or the addition rule. Nevertheless, there were
exceptions to this, and students that seemed to understand what they were
doing, and why.
As to the grading, I took off three points if the hypothesis of the two
functions being multiplied be differentiable was not mentioned, and seven for
each serious inconsistent statement.
Professor’s response
Was it as low as half ? My philosophy in asking this kind of question
is that without some degree of understanding simple memorization will not
work. Also it helps us distinguish the serious students from the others.

V. (40 points.) Find the limit. Distinguish between an infinite limit and
one which doesn’t exist. (Give reasons!)
sin 3x
(a) lim
x→0 x
Answer: By a change of the dummy variable, the limit laws, and the theo-
rem on page 101
sin 3x sin 3x sin u
lim = 3 lim = 3 lim = 3.
x→0 x x→0 3x u→0 u

sin 3x
(b) lim
x→∞ x
1 sin(3x) 1
Answer: Since − ≤ ≤ , the limit is zero by the Sandwich
x x x
Theorem.
sin 3
(c) lim
x→0+ x

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 sin 3
Answer: 0 < sin 3 since 0 < 3 < π. Hence lim =∞
x→0+ x

sin(3 + h) − sin 3
(d) lim
h→0 h
Answer: By the definition of the derivative this is sin0 (3), the derivative of
the sine function evaluated at 3. In other words,

sin(3 + h) − sin 3
lim = cos 3.
h→0 h
Remark. This could also be written as
sin x − sin 3
lim = cos 3.
x→3 x−3
Grader’s comments
This problem wasn’t well handled. The most common errors were

(1) In part (a) : students writing sin(3x) = 3sin(x) to obtain “the correct
answer”;

(2) In part (c) : students forgetting (or rather, I’d suspect, not realizing)
that one needs to check/state that sin(3) is positive, yet claiming that
the relevant limit is +∞.

Each part in V was worth 10 points. Although sorely tempted to award a

0/10 for the error (1), I finally decided to award a 2/10 if students committed
error (1) BUT stated 3 as the answer to that part. There’s the commonplace,
routine type of incompetence, and then, there’s stunningly gross incompe-
tence. Error (1) falls into the latter class, because each student qualified to
register for 221 is supposed to have seen basic trigonometry.
I decided not to penalize error (2) heavily : just 2 points off. A student
could come to me and validly argue that s/he did not explicitly state that
sin(3) is positive because “it’s an obvious fact”. But I suspect they won’t try
to do this for a mere 2 points!
Professor’s Comment
I suppose you all know the common trick that you can correctly evaluate
64/16 by cancelling the 6’s. The next time I ask a question like this I will
use sin 4 so that the answer is −∞.

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_______ Tue Feb 26 09:00:48 2002
--
There are 223 scores
grade range count percent
A 135...150 25 11.2%
AB 120...134 49 22.0%
B 105...119 40 17.9%
BC 90...104 40 17.9%
C 75... 89 28 12.6%
D 60... 74 16 7.2%
F 0... 59 25 11.2%
Mean score = 100.6. Mean grade = 2.53.
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0 *
7 **
14 **
21
28 *****
35 ****
42 ****
49 ****
56 ****
63 *********
70 *********
77 ************
84 **************
91 ****************
98 ***********************
105 ****************
112 ******************
119 **********************
126 ************************
133 ********************
140 ************
147 **
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