Jogging Your Memory

Do you know what to do with this?

You use the quadratic equation, of course, so you can find the value of x.

At the moment I can't think of what else I would use the quadratic equation for. It doesn't really matter what I think; what is important is that GI knows what to do with it and how to use it.

(As you can probably tell, GI is studying these things now that he's in Year 11.)

I had to do a crash review of getting the first derivative the long way a couple of days ago

because GI would not immediately accept my short cut method where I would put the exponent down and subtract one from the original exponent.

Now, the quadratic equation and finding the first derivative are peanuts as compared to the various trigonometric equations. Gosh, I haven't used the special functions in a scientific calculator in a long time.

There were some vague memories of sine, cosine and tangent (and 1/2 and the square root of 3 over 2)

But I needed GI to remind me of the other equations needed for the proving portions in his worksheet when he asked me to help him.

I mean, really. I have yet to find a real life situation where I needed to know these.

and these ...

But I have to admit. I did love doing high school maths, especially if the answers were in the back of the book (even if only the odd numbered questions had answers). And helping GI out this weekend brought out the nerd in me.