PARAMETRIC FUNCTION DIFFERENTIATION

Some relationships between two quantities or variables are so complicated that we sometimes introduce a third quantity or variable in order to make things easier to handle. In mathematics this third quantity is called a parameter. Instead of one equation relating say, x and y, we have two equations, one relating x with the parameter, and one relating y with the parameter. In this unit we will give examples of curves which are defined in this way, and explain how their rates of change can be found using parametric differentiation.