ABSTRACT
Sometimes we are not working with a function at all but a curve, such as a circle, and we still want to find the slope of the tangent line to that curve at a point. This is where implicit differentiation becomes important. We call it implicit because we do not “explicitly” solve for y (the dependent variable), we leave the expression for the curve as it is. (For example, the unit circle x 2 + y 2 = 1.)
