Characteristics of Functions Lesson

Hey everyone! How's everyone doing? Hope you enjoyed your first week + a day at school so far =) I'm Grace Leung from Ms Burchat's third period Advanced Functions class and this is my and the blog's first scribe post!

In today's lesson, we delved a little further into the characteristics of functions. The main idea behind the lesson were the end behaviours. By looking at the end behaviours, we can describe how the graph behaves when the x-value is a large positive or negative number. By using graphing calculators, we were able to visually see and compare functions of different degrees. With the people we were sitting with, a set of functions were assigned to us and we used the calculators to graph them and try to come up with a hypothesis on how the functions related to each other. Though time ran short, groups shared their thoughts and hypotheses. Some groups (mine in particular =P) had difficulty in coming up with a hypothesis, but later on we learned that the degree of the polynomials as well as the sign of the leading coefficients can help us determine what the end behaviours will be without actually seeing the function on a graph. Remember, all even degree functions will have the same end haviours and act in likeness to y = x^2 and y = -x^2. On the other hand, all odd degree functions will have the same end behaviours and be similar to y = x and y = -x.

Does it sound like I understand the lesson? To be honest, when I look at the homework I want to take a Tylenol and go to sleep instead. Share your thoughts with me, guys =) That's all for now... see you guys tomorrow! Have a great day... enjoy the sunshine while it lasts~