1. Find the dimensions of the rectangle of area A that has the smallest perimeter. (Your
answer should be expressed in terms of A.)
2. The base of a triangle is on the x-axis, one side lies along the line y = 3x, and the
third side passes through the point (1, 1). What is the slope of the third side if the
area of the triangle is to be a minimum?
Suppose the third side lies on a line of slope m. We will assume here
that the triangle lies in the first quadrant. (Otherwise, there is no
minimumthink of m ! 1.) Then, the possible values for m are m > 3
and m < 0, as well as m infinite/undefined, corresponding to the triangle
with vertical third side (of base 1 and height 3 and hence area 1/6).
Then the equation of such a line (passing through (1, 1)) is y = mx m+1.
The base of the triangle is the x-intercept of this line, 1 1/m. The height
of the triangle is determined by the intersection of this line with the line
y = 3x. Set 3x = mx m + 1, and solve for x: x = (m 1)/(m 3).
Therefore, the height is 3(m 1)/(m 3). Hence the area is
1 3(m 1)2
A=
2 m(m 3)
3. Find the point(s) on the parabola x = y 2 closest to the point (0, 3).
4. What is the largest possible area of a parallelogram inscribed inside a triangle of area
A? (You may not assume anything special about the triangle. Your answer should be
expressed in terms of A.)
Let the base and height of the triangle be B and H, so that A = BH/2.
Let x and y be the dimensions (base/height) of the parallelogram. We
wish to find maximum of function a = xy; so we need to relate x and y.
By similar triangles,
y H
= ,
B x B
so that a(x) = H
B
x(B x), 0 x B. Check that the maximum occurs
at x = B/2, so that the maximum value of a is A/2.
Since all derivatives of ex are the same, and their values at 1 are e, we
have:
e2 e3 34
P4 (x) = e + e(x 1) + (x 1)2 + (x 1)3 + (x 1)4 .
2 3! 4!
Hence,
P3 (x) = 13 + 2(x 1) + 6(x 1)2 + (x 1)3
6. Read Example 5 on p. 277 of the textbook that provides an approximation for the
number e using the 7-th order Taylor polynomial of y = ex about x = 0. Suppose
that instead one used the 4-th order Taylor polynomial to approximate e. How many
decimal places can we be sure are correct?
s
If we use P4 , then the error term will be E4 (x) = e5! x5 for some s between 0
and 1. For x = 1, this can be no larger than 5!e < 5!3 = 1/40 = 0.025 < 0.05
) the estimate is correct to within 1 decimal.
7. To how many decimal places can you be sure that the approximation sin(0.01) 0.01
is correct? (Hint: one way to think of this approximation is as the result of using the
2nd order Taylor polynomial P2 (x) = P1 (x) for sin x about x = 0.)
Using P2 (x) = x, the 2nd order Taylor polynomial for sin, we estimate
the error as E2 (x). Since (sin x)000 = cos x, we have that E2 (x) = cos
3!
s 3
x
where s is some number between 0 and x. Forx = 0.01 = 1/100, we see
that E2 (1) 3!1 100
1 1 5
3 = 6106 < 107 . Hence, the approximation is accurate