I've been working through some problems in my college differential equations textbook, and I've come to one which asks for a proof that if $f(x, y)$ is a homogenous function of degree $n$, then:
$$ x \frac{\partial f}{\partial x} + y \frac{\partial f}{\partial y} = n f $$
I started with the definition of a homogeneous function:
$$ f(tx, ty) = t^n f(x, y) $$
To get a factor of $n$ somewhere, the obvious thing to try is to differentiate with respect to $t$:
$$ \begin{align} \frac{\partial f}{\partial x} \frac{\partial}{\partial t}(tx) + \frac{\partial f}{\partial y} \frac{\partial}{\partial t}(ty) & = n t^{n-1} f(x, y)\\ x \frac{\partial f}{\partial x} + y \frac{\partial f}{\partial y} & = n t^{n-1} f(x, y) \end{align} $$
That's almost in the right form except for that pesky factor of $t^{n-1}$. Where did I go wrong?
Hint: Fix $(x,y)$ and let $g(t) = f(tx,ty).$ There are two ways to compute $g'(1).$