Monday and Tuesday this week was devoted to the last of our optimization unit. We did a bunch of questions on the whiteboard regarding optimization on Monday. This was in preparation for the quiz we had on Tuesday. It was easy enough to do the questions with a bunch of people beside me, but I still felt like I had a bunch of trouble on my quiz the day after. The first half of the quiz felt fine, but the the second half had my mortal optimization enemies: optimizing routes and rectangles inscribed in semicircles. I really hate those route questions. I feel like I know how to do them, I followed all the steps, but I still felt terrible about my answer. So yeah, probably got a 50 on that quiz.
Then starting on Wednesday, we began our unit on related rates. I thought optimization was bad, but related rates is so, SO much worse. Related rates is like optimization that hates you. Related rates is how an Asian father punishes his children. Related rates is kind of like optimization in that you need to find your equation, but related rates also requires us to differentiate implicitly and a bunch of other 6 complicated steps. We had a homework assignment on this, and I could do the earlier and easier questions just fine, even if they were a little time-consuming. Then came the harder questions like the cone one, and even though we just did a cone question in class on the exact same day, I still couldn't figure it out! My confidence regarding this unit is pretty low. I'm going to have a lot of masteries to do this trimester. SIgh.
Then starting on Wednesday, we began our unit on related rates. I thought optimization was bad, but related rates is so, SO much worse. Related rates is like optimization that hates you. Related rates is how an Asian father punishes his children. Related rates is kind of like optimization in that you need to find your equation, but related rates also requires us to differentiate implicitly and a bunch of other 6 complicated steps. We had a homework assignment on this, and I could do the earlier and easier questions just fine, even if they were a little time-consuming. Then came the harder questions like the cone one, and even though we just did a cone question in class on the exact same day, I still couldn't figure it out! My confidence regarding this unit is pretty low. I'm going to have a lot of masteries to do this trimester. SIgh.