October 12, 2009

A student forgot the Product Rule for differentiation and made the mistake of thinking that $(fg)'=f'g'$.  However, he was lucky and got the correct answer.  The function $f$ that he used was $f(x)=e^{x^2}$ and the domain of his problem was $(\frac12, \infty)$.  What was the function $g$?

Solution.   Substituting the given function, we have $[e^{x^2}g(x)]' = 2xe^{x^2}g'(x)$. Using the correct product rule on the left-hand side of that equation, we get
\begin{align*} 2xe^{x^2}g(x)+e^{x^2}g'(x) = 2xe^{x^2}g'(x) &\Longrightarrow 2xg(x)+g'(x) = 2x g'(x) \\ &\Longrightarrow 2x g(x) = (2x-1)g'(x) \\ &\Longrightarrow\frac{g'(x)}{g(x)} = \frac{2x}{2x-1} = 1+\frac1{2x-1}\\ &\Longrightarrow \ln |g(x)| = x + \tfrac12\ln (2x-1) + K \\ &\Longrightarrow g(x) = Ae^{x + \tfrac12\ln (2x-1)} = A e^{x}e^{\ln\sqrt{2x-1}} \\ &\Longrightarrow g(x) = Ae^{x}\sqrt{2x-1} \end{align*}