Learning Resources
Overview
This unit builds on your previous work with rates and makes the transition to the concept of instantaneous rate of change. This latter concept is fundamental to the study of differential calculus which many of you may study either as a course in high school or when you go on to post secondary study.
In the unit, you will look at the contexts in which rates of change might be considered. You will work with average rates of change initially and then instantaneous rates of change.
You will work from graphs to see how the shape of the graph shows the changes in the dependent variable for defined changes in the independent variable, and how the slope of the tangent to the graph at a point describes the instantaneous rate of change.
You will also work with function descriptions and become familiar with the conventions for describing the slopes of secant and tangent lines.
This unit should take you between 7 and 10 hours to complete.