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Ch09 Differentiation PDF

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54 views3 pages

Ch09 Differentiation PDF

Uploaded by

Ken
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Differentiation

Table of Contents
Using diff ......................................................................................................................
Higher Derivatives ..............................................................................................................
A Different Variable ...........................................................................................................
Wait, that Second Parameter? ...............................................................................................
Plugging Stuff In - Using subs ...........................................................................................
Plotting Derivatives ............................................................................................................

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Differentiation is the most important thing in calculus so let's get to it!

Using diff
What about calculus? Don't worry -- Matlab will not let you down! Suppose you'd like to differentiate
the function log(6*x+2). You could either do it yourself or... just ask Matlab to do it with the diff
command:
syms x
diff(log(6 * x + 2))

ans =
6/(6*x + 2)

Higher Derivatives
What could be easier?
Would you like to find the third derivative of the function log(6*x+2)? That's easy too -- just pass 3
as a second parameter to the diff command:
diff(log(6 * x + 2), 3)

ans =
432/(6*x + 2)^3

A Different Variable
Suppose our expression has two variables and we want the derivative with respect to one of them. As
usual x is the default
syms a x
diff(a^3*x^4)

Differentiation

ans =
4*a^3*x^3

but we can tell Matlab differently.


diff(a^3*x^4,a)

ans =
3*a^2*x^4

We can even do the second derivative with respect to a.


diff(a^3*x^4,a,2)

ans =
6*a*x^4

Wait, that Second Parameter?


Matlab is smart. If the second parameter is a variable it will take the derivative with respect to that variable.
If it's a number it will take that numbered derivative. If it sees a variable and then a number it will take
that numbered derivative with respect to that variable.

Plugging Stuff In - Using subs


It may seem a bit late but this is the perfect time to talk about plugging things into symbolic expressions.
Here's how. Suppose we simply want to plug x=3 into x^2-x+2. We do:
subs(x^2-x+2,x,3)

ans =
8

So now to take the derivative and then plug in, we simply nest the commands. Here's the second derivative
of x^3+exp(x^2) with x=1 plugged in:
subs(diff(x^3+exp(x^2),2),x,1)

ans =
22.3097

Differentiation

Plotting Derivatives
Likewise we can nest diff inside ezplot. Here's an example, a plot of the derivative of sin(x^2):
ezplot(diff(sin(x^2)))

Published with MATLAB 8.0

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