How do you find the derivatives of y=(x-1)^(x^2+1) by logarithmic differentiation?

1 Answer
Mar 15, 2017

dy/dx = (x-1)^(x^2+1){ (x^2+1)/(x-1) + 2xln (x-1) }

Explanation:

We have:

y = (x-1)^(x^2+1)

If we take Natural Logarithms of both sides we get:

ln y = ln { (x-1)^(x^2+1) }
" " = (x^2+1)ln (x-1)

Now we can differentiate implicitly (along with the product rule and chain rule) to get:

1/ydy/dx = (x^2+1)(1/(x-1) * 1) + (2x)(ln (x-1))
" " = (x^2+1)/(x-1) + 2xln (x-1)

Giving:

dy/dx = (x-1)^(x^2+1){ (x^2+1)/(x-1) + 2xln (x-1) }