Question

The cost, C, to produce b baseball bats per day is modeled by the function C(b) = 0.06b2 – 7.2b + 390. What number of bats should be produced to keep costs at a minimum?

Answer 1

We want to find the value of (b) that minimizes the function. There's a couple ways you could do this:
1. graph the function (however, this is not always an option, so it would be good to learn how to do this algebraically)
2. algebraically: using the general form ax^2 + bx + c, determine your a b and c values. Then calculate -b/(2a).
3. using calculus (if you haven't taken calculus yet, don't worry about this) but you can take the derivative of the function, set it equal to 0, and solve for b