Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics

MAM1000W
Tutorial 2 1. (a) The water taris of the City of Cape Town are as follows: The rst 8 kiloliters (kl) used per month are free. The following 6 kl cost R4 per kl. The next 12 kl after this cost R8 per kl. Any water used after this is charged at R12 per kl. Write down a (piecewise dened) function that gives the amount paid for water per month for any monthly water consumption. (The above gures are not exact, but illustrate the structure of water taris.) Draw a graph of amount paid for water against water consumption. (b) The water taris for the village of Letjiesbosch are much simpler: The rst 10 kiloliters per month are free, and after that water costs R8 per kl. Write down the same kind of function as in (a) and draw its graph on the same system of axes as in (a). Where would it be cheaper to ll a swimming pool, Cape Town or Letjiesbosch? 2. In lectures we looked at the power functions, with non-negative integers as powers. In this question we ask you to explore the power functions where the powers are negative integers. One of the skills we would like you to acquire in this course is to draw rough graphs of functions by exploring their properties, and not relying simply on plotting points. (There is nothing wrong with plotting some points when you are trying to draw a graph of a function, but if you rely on this only, you may miss out on some important points and end up with the wrong graph.) Let n be a positive integer and dene the function gn by gn (x) = xn . Answer the following questions. In some cases you may have to consider the cases n even and n odd separately. (a) What is the domain of gn ? (b) What is the range of gn ? (c) Find gn (1) and gn (1). (d) What happens to gn (x) as x 0? (e) Is gn even, or odd, or neither? (f) What happens to gn (x) as x ? And as x ? (g) Where is gn increasing, and where is it decreasing? Use this information to draw, on the same system of axes, rough graphs of g1 , g2 , g3 and g4 . Try to do this without calculating any further function values. February 2011

3. (a) Draw a graph of the function f (x) = |2x 3|. (b) Solve the equation |2x 3| = 1. (c) Solve the equation |2x 3| = |x 2|. (Another graph may help here.) (d) Find all x such that |2x 3| < |x 2|. 4. Sketch the graphs of the following functions: (a) f (x) = x2 1. (b) g(x) = |x2 1| (c) h(x) = (x 1)|x + 1|. For each of these functions say whether it is an even or odd function, or neither of the two. 5. In this question you are going to draw a rough graph of the rational function f (x) = 2x3 x2 13x + 24 . x2 + x 2

(a) Factorize both the numerator and the denominator (using the factor theorem if you like.) (b) Use the factorized form of f (x) to determine where it is positive and where negative. (Use a sign table.) (c) Now sketch the graph of f showing the intercepts with the axes and the vertical asymptotes. (d) Explain why there has to be a turning point between 2 and 1. (e) What is the minimum number of turning points that f must have? (f) Divide the denominator into the numerator to get f into the form of a polynomial plus a remainder term. 6x + 18 (g) Your remainder term should be 2 . Discuss the behaviour of this x +x2 remainder term for very large negative and positive x. (h) Use your answers to (f) and (g) to determine the end behaviour (the behaviour as x and as x ) of f . [Hint: For large positive and negative x, the graph of f looks very similar to that of a much simpler function. Which one?] (i) One could argue that the graph of f has three asymptotes. Give them all. Does the graph of f intersect any of these asymptote? If so, where? Questions 6 and 7 on next page.

6. In this question we start with the graph of quite a simple function and then do all kinds of things to it. Some of the things we do will be familiar from school, but the function we use is not so familiar. (a) Let S(t) = 1 if 0 t < 1 and S(t) = 0 for all other real values of t. Draw the graph of S. (This is the graph that we are going to use and change. Ask a tutor to check your groups graph.) What is the domain of S? What is its range? (b) Let T (t) = S(t) 1 . Draw the graph of T using the same set of axes used 2 above. What have we really done to the graph of S to get the graph of T ? (c) Let c be a constant, and U (t) = S(t) + c. Explain how the graph of U can be obtained from the graph of S. (If youre stuck, look again at (b).) We have tried to generalise in this question what we did for a specic value of c in (b).) (d) Let W (t) = S(t + 2). Draw the graph of S and W on a new set of axes. If youre stuck, use a table of values for t. Try to see what we have done to S here to get W . (e) Let X(t) = S(t 2). Draw the graph of X in on the set of axes for your last question. (Why have we asked this question? Whats the dierence between this question and the last? Get your graphs for W and X checked.) (f) Let a be a constant and Y (t) = S(t + a). Give a rule for obtaining the graph of Y from S. (Hint: (d) and (e) should help here.) (g) Let Z(t) = S(S(t)) (What does that mean?) Draw the graph of Z on a new set of axes. (Use tables if you are stuck.) Many tutorials will have some slightly more challenging questions; well use an asterisk (*) to indicate such questions. Do not automatically leave out such questions! You should always be able to make some progress with them, and most of the time youll probably surprise yourself and get them out. 7. ( ) Let S be the same function as in the previous question. Let A(t) = S(t) for 0 t < 2 and let A(t) = A(t 2) for 2 t < 4. (a) Sketch the graph of A on a new set of axes. What is the domain of A? (b) Let B(t) = S(t) for 0 t < 2 and B(t) = B(t 2) for all other real values of t. Draw the graph of B on a new set of axes. (What on earth is going on now? What values of t make sense here? Do you have enough information about B? Try to calculate B(3), B(5), B(1); this may give you a hint.) What is the domain of B? (c) Explain how the graph of B would change if we dropped the word other in the denition of B.