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I'm currently learning implicit differentiation (which I am having a lot of difficulties with) and I have encountered the following equation

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I'm not exactly sure how we got from the third step to the fourth step. Could someone please explain it to me? Thanks in advance for any help!

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2 Answers 2

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Following my comment, given two functions $f, g$ of $x$, recall that the product rule is $$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, f(x)g(x) \,\Big] = f'(x)g(x) + f(x)g'(x). $$ If $y$ is a function of $x$ and $y$ is unknown, we can just write $$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, y \,\Big] = \frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}x}. $$ Now, consider the derivative of $x^{3}y$. The first function is $x^{3}$ and the second function is $y$, so that $$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, x^{3}y \,\Big] = \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, x^{3} \,\Big]\cdot y + x^{3} \cdot \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, y \,\Big] = 3x^{2}y + x^{3}\frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}x}. $$

Also recall that the chain rule for $f$ and $g$ is $$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, f\big(g(x)\big) \,\Big] = f'\big(g(x)\big) \cdot g'(x). $$ Consider the derivative of $y^{2}$. This time we use the chain rule with $f(y) = y^{2}$ and $g(x) = y$, so that $$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, y^{2} \,\Big] = 2y \cdot \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}x}\Big[\, y \,\Big] = 2y\frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}x}. $$

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    $\begingroup$ ah, the first steps is using the product rule, not the chain rule. Thats where I got stuck. Thank you so much for helping out! $\endgroup$
    – Thor
    Commented Jul 15, 2018 at 23:16
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Wrie your equation in the form

$$x^3y(x)+y(x)^2-x^2=5$$ then we get by the chain rule:

$$3x^2y(x)+x^3y'(x)-2y(x)y'(x)-2x=0$$

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