Approximating the Tangent to a Curve with Secants

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This Demonstration shows how to find the slope of the tangent line to a curve at a point by approximating it by a secant, that is, a line joining two points A and B on the curve. The approximation becomes better as the points draw nearer to the point of interest.

Contributed by: Stephen Wilkerson (Towson University) (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


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