All entries for Sunday 06 February 2011
February 06, 2011
Teaching the concept of limit in calculus
Limit
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This entry was another spin-off from the session of mathematics education for post-16. The topic was teaching calculus. I chose to introduce differentiation from the concept of limit using Geogebra. The dynamic geometry software is meant to illustrate the existence of limit for the gradient of a function. The points A and B on the curve y=xn in the Geogebra page can be made arbitrarily close but never coincide. As separation of AB in x tends to 0, the gradient of the curve tends to a limit. I would begin the introduction of limit with Zeno's paradoxes. When the students had comprehended the concept of limit, the derivative of y=xn can be algebraically derived from the binomial expansion of (x+dx)n. The zoom and unzoom actions of the page were achieved using the javascript extension of Geogebra.