What is the derivative of arcsin(x12)?

1 Answer
Jun 30, 2016

dydx=12(x(1x))

Explanation:

First I'm going to walk you through a nice way of deriving the inverse trig derivatives.

Start with y=arcsin(x) ,this allows us to construct a triangle shown below.enter image source here

Rearranging we get that x=sin(y)

Hence, dxdy=cos(y)

Note that cos(y)=1x2

We obtain that:

dydx=1cos(y)=11x2

Now that we know the general form, we use the chain rule.

For y(u(x)),dydx=dydududx

So dydx=11(x12)2ddx(x12)

dydx=12(x(1x))