Identity Crisis? Identity Resolution?

Hello mathematicians, puzzlers, and other curious people!

Whilst doing homework for my numerical methods class (which is about getting computers to do math for you), and using GeoGebra to troubleshoot a result that wasn’t working out, I ran into an issue: GeoGebra’s expression for a derivative was different from what I had calculated by hand. It had some terms the same and some different. With a little rearrangement, where I had , it had .

So, I graphed both:

A picture is not a proof, but I’m pretty sure we could make a “they’re the same picture” meme out of this.

Next time I teach trig identities, I think I’ll present as a conjecture that needs verified, and see what happens.

Calc You Later!