#1 Assignment -- Math 241. Due: Friday, January 12.
The first couple of weeks will be devoted to a review of important classes of functions, linear, quadratic, exponential, and logarithmic, and their application to mathematical modeling. The characteristics of these functions should be quite familiar, so this part of the review should go pretty smoothly. But We will now, at least, want to make use of some of the technology available. This may cause a few problems. We will assume that you not only have access to a graphing calculator (preferably a TI-83 or comparable device) or Excel or Mathematica (or some similar application) but can also either use it effectively or have the necessary operation manuals. Since so much variety is available, and we certainly don't know it all, we will be able to provide only very limited assistance. The text does provide very clear, and reasonably complete, instructions for the TI-83 and Excel. So we will go easy on the technology this first week. But the real emphasis first these couple of weeks will be on using the mathematics we are reviewing for some simple modeling applications. This, after all, is probably the main goal of the course. To help you learn to apply mathematics, and in particular, calculus, to problems that arise from a variety of "real life" like situations. Anyway, your specific assignment for this week is to study Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 of the Waner-Costenoble text (and maybe review briefly the material on quadratic functions in Section 9.1) and then tackle the following exercises: [Note: Several exercises below are listed i...