Welcome to the forum and your welcome.
]]>The above work demonstrates the easiest parts of your questions could be answered with no math at all. Just a little computation and some effort.
My brother was kind enough to explain to me how this is done using vector analysis. He says:
This is a rather common book problem and is all over the internet. You both should really know how to do this one.
I will try to remember what he told me and do the problem by myself.
The gradient is the vector that points in the direction of steepest ascent or descent. It is computed by:
Taking partials of f(x,y) we get:
The vector is:
Now dot product g with the unit vector for south [0,-1]
It is positive you are going uphill as I already showed you with a gradient of .8
Now dot product g with the unit vector for northwest [-1/sqrt(2), 1/sqrt(2)].
So you are going downhill with a gradient of -.141421
For c) The slope is largest in the direction of the gradient g. The rate ascent is the norm of g,
It is positive so that is the steepest ascent. To get the angle with the horizontal you just take the arctan
of the norm of g which is 1.
No one can help me! I'm disappointed.
Currently, I am the only one in here and there are other questions. I am swamped at the moment.
This is what you can be doing to help yourself instead of being disappointed at me or the forum. I am doing the best I can.
I presume you want the x axis running from left to right and the y axis up and down.
Since there are very general questions, you can be getting them for yourself. For instance the maximum value is 1000 and occurs at (0,0). Easy to see just from the function.
a) If you walk due south, will you start to ascend or descend?
To be walking south in your system means for the y coordinate to be decreasing and the x coordinate to remain constant.
Obviously you are ascending until you get to (60,0). Then what happens?
If you walk northwest, will you start to ascend or descend?
To walk Northwest means x is decreasing as y is increasing, both at the same rate. So you have this table.
Looks like you are descending.
]]>Please help me! Thanks.
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