How do you find the coordinates of the local extrema of the function?
1 Answer
The best way to do this is to find the derivative of the function.
Let's say our function is
First, we take the derivative of the function. Remember:
So:
Now we need to find the point where
So
The last step is to plug this x value into the original equation.
So the local minimum is at
Note that I deliberately didn't pick a "nice and easy" function - this is to show that finding the derivative, and making the derivative equal zero, works for everything.