Question

I am fine with using the notion of cancellation of fractions to help students remember the chain rule, but it is dangerous to be too cavalier with this idea. For example, suppose $F(x,y)=0$ defines $y$ implicitly as a function of $x$. Then $$\frac{dy}{dx}=-\frac{\frac{\partial F}{\partial x}}{\frac{\partial F}{\partial y}}.$$ Naive cancellation gives the wrong sign!