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Book Reading: The Classroom Chef
Over the weekend, I read "The Classroom Chef" by John Stevens and Matt Vaudrey. This is a post about my reaction to the book.
How I choose which trig substitution to do
Trig substitution is a fancy kind of substitution used to help find the integral of a particular family of fancy functions. These fancy functions involve things like a2 + x2 or a2 - x2 or x2 - a2 , usually under root signs or inside half-powers, and the purpose of trig substitution is to use the magic of trig identities to make the roots and half-powers go away, thus making the integral easier. One particular thing the students struggle with is choosing which trig substitution to do.
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