In this explainer, we will learn how to find the derivative of a function using the product rule.
Once we have learned how to differentiate simple functions, we might start to wonder how we can differentiate more complex functions. Generally, more complex functions are created from simpler ones by combining them together in various ways. There are a few basic ways to combine two functions and :
- addition or subtraction: ;
- multiplication or division: or ;
- composition: .
To be able to differentiate more complex functions, it would be very helpful to have rules that tell us how to differentiate functions combined in these particular ways. At this point in a calculus course, we already know that the derivative of a sum is the sum of the derivatives:
Furthermore, we know that differentiation is actually a linear operation. This means that, in addition to the sum rule, we have the following rule for multiplication by a constant: where is a constant. In this explainer, we will focus on finding the derivatives of products.
Given the rules of differentiation for sums and multiplication by a constant, we might guess that the derivative of a product is the product of the derivatives. This is not actually the correct rule as we will demonstrate in the first example.
Example 1: Exploring the Derivatives of Products
Consider the functions and .
- Find and .
- Find .
- Given that , find its derivative.
Answer
Part 1
Using the power rule for differentiation, we have and
Part 2
Taking the product of and , we have
Part 3
Once again, we can apply the power rule to find the derivative of as follows:
The previous demonstrated that, generally,
This poses the question of what the correct formula is. We will begin by considering the geometric interpretation of the product. When we take the product of two values, it is as if we are computing the area of a rectangle. So for two functions and , we can consider the product to represent the area of the rectangle whose side lengths are and as shown in the figure.
We would like to know how this area changes in response to a small change in . If changes by a small amount given by , there will be a corresponding change in both and which we represent as
The area of the resulting rectangle will be . The change in area is therefore given by
The figure below represents this change in area. (The figure shows the effect if the change in area is positive; a similar picture could be drawn to represent negative changes of area.)
Returning to equation (1), we can divide by , which gives us
Taking the limit as , we get the derivative of :
Using the properties of finite limits on continuous functions, we have
Since and , we can rewrite this as
As for the limit , we know that the change in tends to zero as the change in tends to zero. Hence, the value of this limit is zero. Therefore, we have
This result is referred to as the product rule, which we formally state below.
Rule: Product Rule
Given two differentiable functions and , the derivative of their product is given by
This can be written succinctly using prime notation as follows:
Let’s consider an example where we need to apply the product rule.
Example 2: Differentiation Using the Product Rule
Find the first derivative of the function .
Answer
For an example like this, we could either expand the parentheses and then differentiate or apply the product rule to find the derivative and then expand any parentheses if necessary. In this example, we will demonstrate using the product rule which states that where and are both functions of .
We let and .
We begin by finding by applying the power rule as follows:
To find , we first express each term of using indices:
Then, using the power rule and the sum rule, we have
We can now substitute both derivatives into the formula for the product rule, which gives
We can now expand the parentheses as follows:
Finally, we gather together our like terms and rewrite the expression in descending powers of :
In the next example, we will apply the product rule when the algebriac expression for the functions are not provided.
Example 3: Using the Product Rule
Let . If , , , and , find .
Answer
We begin by applying the product rule to find an expression for . Recall that the product rule states that
Setting and , we have
Substituting these expressions into the product rule, we have
Therefore,
Substituting in the values of , , , and yields
In previous examples, we have considered the derivative of the product of two functions. The product rule can be generalized to the product of more than two functions. In the next example, we will derive the product rule for three functions.
Example 4: Differentiating Triple Products
The product rule says that . Use this to derive a formula for the derivative .
Answer
We begin by considering the product as the product of two functions and the function . We can now apply the product rule to the derivative as follows:
We can now apply the product rule to find the derivative of the product as follows:
Hence,
The previous example demonstrates that the product rule can generalize to the product of more than two functions. In fact, we can generalize the product rule to any finite product of functions. In the final example, we will consider a function defined as a triple product of functions.
Example 5: Differentiating Products
Find the first derivative of at .
Answer
The function is the product of three functions. Therefore, we might think it is best to apply the product rule for the product of three functions. However, before doing this, it is worth noting that the last two sets of parentheses are the difference of two squares in factored form. Therefore, it might be easier to first expand these parentheses and then apply the product rule to the resulting expression. This is the approach we will take in this example. Hence,
We can now apply the product rule:
Setting and , we have
Substituting these expressions into the product rule, we have
Evaluating at , we have
Key Points
- To find the derivative of the product of two differentiable functions and , we can use the product rule which states that This is often written more succinctly using prime notation as follows:
- The product rule can be generalized to the product of an arbitrary number of functions. For example, the product rule for three functions is written as
- The product rule can be combined with other rules of differentiation.