What's Geogebra Doing?
The last few activities have shown us that Geogebra is able to calculate derivatives. The functions
f and g and their derivatives (as calculated by Geogebra in the previous activities) are displayed below.
Just to show you this isn't a fluke however, try entering your own function. If you can't think of one, maybe try
george(x)=-5x^2+12x-2
Then, after you've done so, type derivative(functionname) but of course replace functionname with your function's actual name. So, if you used my suggestion, you should type
derivative(george)If you really stop to think, this is kind of amazing. How is Geogebra doing this? Is it somehow taking a look at the slopes of the tangent lines really quickly, and then making a statistical model? Or is it doing something even cleverer?
It turns out it's doing something even clever...
Move forward to find out!