OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

The dierentiation and its applications can be used to solve practical problems. This include minimizing costs, maximizing areas, minimizing distances and so on. In solving such practical problems, the biggest obstacle comes from converting the words into mathematical terms. Lets think about problem-solving procedure. 1. Understand the Problem - Of course, it is the most important thing to clearly understand what we have and what we should do. 2. Draw a Diagram - In most problems, it is very useful to visualize the problem. 3. Introduce Notation - Assign a symbol (variable) to the known quantities and unknown quantities. Since we are not studying multi-variable calculus, we can only control one variable at a time. It is often required to eliminate all but one variable by using the relations given in the problem. Also, dont forget the range of the variable. 4. Formulate the Target - Express the quantity that we want to maximize or minimize in terms of the variable in step 3. After nishing these steps, we would get a minimization/maximization problem, which can be solved by dierentiation. Example 1. A farmer has 2000 ft of fencing and wants to fence o a rectangular eld. What is the largest fenced area of eld the farmer can get? Solution 1st step. After removing non-mathematical terms, we would have only two things left: a) rectangle whose perimeter is 2000ft and b) maximize the area of the rectangle. 2nd step. Rectangle has four sides and its area equals to the product of its width and its height(depth). 3rd step. Let x be the width and y be the height. Since we want only one variable here, we should eliminate y by expressing it in terms of x. To do this, we use the given relation that the perimeter of the rectangle is 2000ft. It means x + y + x + y = 2x + 2y = 2000.

OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

From this equation, we can get y = 1000 x. Since x and y = 1000 x are lengths, they may not be negative. Thus we also have x0 and y = 1000 x 0, or x 1000. 4th step. We want to maximize the area A, which is A(x) = xy = x(1000 x) = 1000x x2 , with the range 0 x 1000. The derivative is A (x) = 1000 2x, so we can nd that A(x) has a critical value at x = 500. The maximum of A must occur either at this point or at one of the endpoints. Since A(0) = 0, A(500) = 250000, A(1000) = 0 the largest area we can get is 250,000 square feet. The maximum is attained when we make the square fence with its side 500ft. Before solving other examples, we would introduce a basic but useful principle for nding maxima or minima. Theorem 1. Suppose that a continuous function f (x) is dened on an interval and it has its only local extremum at x = c. i) If f (c) is the local maximum, then it is the global maximum. ii) If f (c) is the local minimum, then it is the global minimum. To see this, suppose that f (c) is the local maximum. Then f (x) decreases as x increases where x > c. If f (x) attains a global maximum other than f (c) where x > c, f (x) must increase again at some number. But then f (x) would get a local minimum there, contradicting that f (c) is the only local extremum. By similar argument, we can see that f (x) cannot attain a global minimum where x < c. Thus, f (c) is the global maximum. The same holds for the minimum. We can use this idea in many optimization problems as well as in the following examples. Example 2. There are 60 apple trees in an orchard. Each tree produces 700 apples. For each additional tree planted in the orchard, the output per tree drops by 10 apples. How many trees should be added to the existing orchard in order to maximize the total output of trees? Solution Assume that we added x trees in the orchard. Since the total production of the tree P is given by the product of (the number of trees) and (apple output per tree), we have P (x) = (60 + x)(700 10x) = 42000 + 100x 10x2 . We want to maximize P (x) in the domain of x 0. Its derivative is P (x) = 100 20x.

OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

The only critical number is x = 5. To see whether the minimum occurs at this critical number, we evaluate P (x) at x = 0 and x = 5. Since P (0) = 42000, P (5) = 42250, the global maximum occurs at the critical number. Therefore, we should add 5 more trees to the orchard to maximize the total output of trees. Example 3. Find the point on the parabola y = x2 that is the closest to the point (5, -1). Solution The distance between the point (5, -1) and the point (x, y) is d= d= (x 5)2 + (y + 1)2 . (x 5)2 + (x2 + 1)2 . Since (x, y) is on the parabola, we can let y = x2 . So d becomes

Instead of minimizing d, we will minimize d2 . Let f (x) = d2 = x2 10x + 25 + x4 + 2x2 + 1 = x4 + 3x2 10x + 26. By dierentiating, we obtain f (x) = 4x3 + 6x 10 = (x 1)(4x2 + 4x + 10). Since 4x2 + 4x + 10 = 0 does not have a real root, f (x) = 0 when x = 1. By the rst derivative test, or by the Theorem 1, we can see that it gives us the global minimum. Thus, the point on the parabola y = x2 that is the closest to the point (5, -1) is (1, 1).