Instructional Materials

This instructional material is about the applied optimization problem in Calculus I. Before this course, students already learned the definition of limits, continuous functions and derivatives. They also study the important rules, such as derivatives of linear combinations, Chain rule and maxima and minima of functions on a closed interval. Now, they need to learn how to create a mathematical equation to describe applied optimization problems into mathematical problems and then solve them.

Firstly, I will use the slides to teach this topic in class. In the slides, I first introduce the topic and objectives of this class and then review some necessary materials. Then I use an example to explain that how to applied the derivatives to optimization problems and then introduce the steps to solve this kind of problems. Secondly, I assign a homework to help students practice and remember the knowledge. After students finish their homework and get the feedback, students will take a 20-minutes quiz with two questions. By this quiz, students need to draw pictures, set up the variables, build the mathematical equations and then solve the problems. After the quiz, I will post the solution and rubric for this quiz. As a result, students could completely understand the method to solve the linear optimization problems step by step.

The object of these materials is that students will be able to build correct mathematical variables and equations to describe the practical problems (optimization problems) in the real world and then solve them by hands.

Please see the attachments for the details.