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Example 5 In the year 2 0 1 1 , a group of musicians launched a surf music social website, a site on which people

Example 5 In the year 2011, a group of musicians launched a surf music social website, a site on which people who enjoy listening to instrumental surf guitar could communicate and interact with each other. The site receives revenue from organizations that place advertisements on the site's pages. The musicians constructed the revenue function
R(x)=-14x4200x2
to model the revenue R(x) the site should realize from online advertising x months after the beginning of 2011.
A financial analyst claims that under this model, the site will realize its maximum revenue 30 months after the beginning of 2011 and then from that time on the revenue will decrease slowly to 0. Assuming the revenue model to be true, should the website's managers accept or reject this analyst's forecast?
Solution The analyst makes statements about a function's maximum value and its decreasing-at-a-decreasing-rate behavior. Such a claim involves the first and second derivatives.
Begin by finding the first and second derivative of R(x) and the critical values.
R'(x)=-x3400x and R''(x)=-3x2400
R'(x)=0 when -x3400x=0Solving this equation, we get
-x(x2-400)=0
-x(x20)(x-20)=0
x=0,-20,20
The values 0 and -20 make no sense in the context of the problem, so the only critical value is 20. We can make a sign chart to see where the function is increasing or decreasing.
Figure 10
As the sign chart shows, at x=20,R(x) changes from increasing to decreasing, indicating a maximum occurs at that point. This means the media site will see its maximum revenue 20 months after the beginning of 2011, contradicting the analyst's claim of 30 months.
Also for all values of x>20,R'(x)0 and R''(x)0. These results mean that for all months after the maximum revenue is realized, the revenue function decreases at an increasing rate. This, again, contradicts the analyst's forecast that the site's revenue will decrease slowly to 0. The revenue will decrease quickly to 0. The website's managers should reject both the analyst's forecasts.decreases at an increasing rate. This, again, contradicts the analyst's forecast that the site's revenue will decrease slowly to 0. The revenue will decrease quickly to 0. The website's managers should reject both the analyst's forecasts.
In Section 3.1, we used the first derivative test to determine if a critical value of a function f produced a relative maximum or a relative minimum. Because a function is concave upward at a point if its second derivative is positive at that point, it makes sense that if x=c is a critical value of the function, then it must produce a relative minimum. (See Figure 11.) Likewise, because a function is concave downward at a point if its second derivative is negative at that point, it makes sense that if x=c is a critical value of the function, then it must produce a relative maximum. See Figure 11.
x=c produces a relative minimum and fis concave
x=c produces a relative upward at x=6 downward at x=c
Figure 11
5. Repeat example 5 using the function
R(t)=-14x4450x2
Example 5 In the year 2 0 1 1 , a group of

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