Learn to Sketch Curves using Calculus

Curve Sketching is an incredibly useful tool in mathematical problem solving, as well as an opportunity to improve and test your algebraic understanding. As you study mathematics through school and college to degree level, your algebraic skills will be increasingly tested. In order to become a strong mathematician, you need to understand what the algebra is telling you.

Curve Sketching is often examinable and can be a challenging topic to master due to the multitude of techniques that need to be learnt. This course is here to help. Computer programs like Autograph, Desmos, Maple and Matlab can all plot curves, but understanding why a curve behaves the way it does relies on your understanding of algebra and calculus.

Using techniques that we will learn on this course, you will be able to successfully sketch complicated functions and learn about the behaviour of different graphs. The course is structured so that you will learn about Graph Transformations and Differentiation and its uses in the initial sections. You will not need to have met these concepts before.

I go through Differentiation from its basics, through the derivatives of different functions, and up to the Chain Rule, Product Rule and Quotient Rule. We then start Sketching, and within this we will learn many different techniques along the way. Linear Graphs:Find where the graph crosses the coordinate axes.