MyRank

Click here to go to MyRank

Friday, February 17, 2017

Higher Order Derivatives

If y = f(x), then dy/dx the derivative of y with respect to x, is itself, in general or function of x and can be differentiated again. 

To fix up the idea, we shall call dy/dx as the first order derivative of y with respect to x and the derivative of dy/dx w.r.t. x as the second order derivative of y w.r.t x and will be denoted by d²y/dx², similarly the derivative of d²y/dx² w.r.t. x will be termed as the third order derivative of y w.r.t. x and will be denoted by d³y/dx³ and soon. 

The nthorder derivative of y w.r.t x will be denoted by dⁿy/dxⁿ.



If y = f(x) then the other alternative notation for dy/dx, d²y/dx², d³y/dx³, …, dⁿy/dxⁿ are y₁, y₂, y₃, … yn

y’, y’’, y’’’, … y(n)

Dy, Dy², D³y, …, Dⁿy

f’(x), f’’(x), f’’’(x), … fⁿ(x)

The values of these derivatives at  are denoted by yn (a), yⁿ (a), Dⁿy (a), fⁿ (a) or.

Examples: If x = sinθ, y = cospθ prove that (1 - x²) y₂ - xy₁ + p²y = 0, where y₂ = d²y/dx² and y₁ = dy/dx.

Solution: We have,

x = sinθ and y = cospθ


Differentiating both sides w.r.t. x we get

No comments:

Post a Comment