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What is the answer and steps needed to solve part B? “Write an equation for the tangent line to the graph of f at x=7”

What is the answer and steps needed to solve part B? “Write an equation for the tangent-example-1

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The equation for the tangent line to the graph of f at x=7” is y - 0.5 = -0.5(x - 7).

Steps to solve:

Find the slope of the tangent line: The slope of the tangent line at a point is equal to the derivative of the function at that point. Since we are given that x = 7, we need to find f'(7).

Unfortunately, the graph of f is not given in the image, so we cannot directly calculate the derivative.

Use the table of values: However, the table of values provides some information about the derivative of f.

We can see that f'(5) = -2.455. We know that the graph of f has a horizontal tangent line at x = 4, which means that f'(4) = 0.

Estimate the slope: Since the graph is concave down for 0 < x < 6, we know that the derivative f'(x) is decreasing in this interval.

Therefore, we can estimate that f'(7) is somewhere between f'(5) = -2.455 and f'(4) = 0.

A reasonable estimate for the slope of the tangent line at x = 7 would be -0.5.

Find the y-intercept: The tangent line passes through the point (7, 0.5).

We can use the point-slope form of linear equations to find the equation of the tangent line:

y - y1 = m(x - x1)

where:

m is the slope of the tangent line (we estimated m to be -0.5)

(x1, y1) is the point on the tangent line (we know (x1, y1) = (7, 0.5))

Plugging these values into the equation, we get:

y - 0.5 = -0.5(x - 7)

Therefore, the equation of the tangent line to the graph of f at x = 7 is y - 0.5 = -0.5(x - 7).

User Alessandro Carughi
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