<p>how often are these two topics on the ap exam?</p>
<p>optimization, not that much; related rates, definitely - last year I think it was a FR question; but usually there's a simple on on MC</p>
<p>Optimization is rarely on there in the sense of the "find the largest volume for a box such that..." type problems that are in the textbooks.</p>
<p>But in terms of finding absolute minima and maxima (which will happen every time they don't use the word "relative" or "local" before the words "minima" or "maxima", you do need to justify these by checking out the endpoints, which is an idea that optimization really heavily emphasized.</p>
<p>As far as related rates goes, it does show up on the FR from time to time.</p>