In an episode of the simpsons television show, homer reads from a newspaper and announces "here's good news! according to this eye-catching article, sat scores are declining at a slower rate." interpret homer's statement in terms of a function and its first and second derivatives.

Does the function satisfy the hypotheses of the mean value theorem on the given interval? f(x) = 4x^2 + 3x + 4, [−1, 1] no, f is continuous on [−1, 1] but not differentiable on (−1, 1). no, f is not continuous on [−1, 1]. yes, f is continuous on [−1, 1] and differentiable on (−1, 1) since polynomials are continuous and differentiable on . there is not enough information to verify if this function satisfies the mean value theorem. yes, it does not matter if f is continuous or differentiable; every function satisfies the mean value theorem.