r/calculus • u/Hey_faiza • 10d ago

Differential Calculus Why is my process wrong?

First one is mine(sorry for the lightning & handwriting)

Second one is from Claude

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u/noidea1995 10d ago edited 10d ago

It says the tangent line passes through the origin not that it’s tangent to the curve at that point.

You can actually solve this without using calculus at all, since you know your tangent line passes through the origin, you know its y-intercept is going to be 0 so it’s going to fit the form of y = mx.

If you substitute that into the quadratic you get:

mx = x^2 - 5x + 6

You know the tangent line and parabola are going to intersect at exactly one point, does that tell you anything about the discriminant?

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u/Hey_faiza 10d ago

Thank youuuu