Find The Derivative of \(x^x\)

Find the first derivative of \(y = x^x\) for \(x \gt 0 \) with all the steps presented.


Derivative of \(x^{x}\) with Steps

Note that the function \( y = x^{x}\) is neither a power function of the form \( x^{k}\) nor an exponential function of the form \( b^{x}\) and the known formulas of Differentiation of these two functions cannot be used. We need to find another method to find the first derivative of the given function.
Given: \[ y = x^{x} \]
Take the natural log (ln) of both sides of the above: \[ \ln y = \ln\left(x^{x}\right) \]
Use properties of logarithmic functions \(\ln A^{b} = b \ln A\) to the right side of the above equation and obtain: \[ \ln y = x \ln x \]
Differentiate both sides of the above with respect to \(x\), using the chain rule on the left side and the product rule on the right: \[ \frac{1}{y} \cdot \frac{dy}{dx} = \frac{d}{dx}(x \ln x) \] \[ \frac{1}{y} \cdot \frac{dy}{dx} = 1 \cdot \ln x + x \cdot \frac{1}{x} \] Simplify the right side: \[ \frac{1}{y} \cdot \frac{dy}{dx} = \ln x + 1 \]
Multiply both sides by \(y\) and simplify: \[ \frac{dy}{dx} = y(\ln x + 1) \]
Substitute \(y\) by \(x^{x}\) to obtain the final answer: \[ \boxed{\frac{dy}{dx} = x^{x}(\ln x + 1)} \]


Exercises

Find the first derivative of: \[ f(x) = x^{2x} \] \[ g(x) = (\sin x)^{x} \] \[ h(x) = (x^2 + 1)^{x} \]
Answers to the Above Exercises: \[ f'(x) = 2x^{2x}(\ln x + 1) \] \[ g'(x) = (\sin x)^{x}\left(\ln(\sin x) + \frac{x \cos x}{\sin x}\right) \] \[ h'(x) = (x^2 + 1)^{x}\left(\ln(x^2 + 1) + \frac{2x^2}{x^2 + 1}\right) \]


More References and Links

Differentiation and Derivatives