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Finding global maxima and minima is the goal of mathematical optimization. If a function is continuous on a closed interval, then by the extreme value theorem, global maxima and minima exist. Furthermore, a global maximum (or minimum) either must be a local maximum (or minimum) in the interior of the domain, or must lie on the boundary of the ...
Fermat's theorem is central to the calculus method of determining maxima and minima: in one dimension, one can find extrema by simply computing the stationary points (by computing the zeros of the derivative), the non-differentiable points, and the boundary points, and then investigating this set to determine the extrema.
The higher-order derivative test or general derivative test is able to determine whether a function's critical points are maxima, minima, or points of inflection for a wider variety of functions than the second-order derivative test.
In numerical analysis, a quasi-Newton method is an iterative numerical method used either to find zeroes or to find local maxima and minima of functions via an iterative recurrence formula much like the one for Newton's method, except using approximations of the derivatives of the functions in place of exact derivatives.
The critical points of Lagrangians occur at saddle points, rather than at local maxima (or minima). [ 4 ] [ 17 ] Unfortunately, many numerical optimization techniques, such as hill climbing , gradient descent , some of the quasi-Newton methods , among others, are designed to find local maxima (or minima) and not saddle points.
By Fermat's theorem, all local maxima and minima of a continuous function occur at critical points. Therefore, to find the local maxima and minima of a differentiable function, it suffices, theoretically, to compute the zeros of the gradient and the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix at these zeros.
Perhaps the best-known example of the idea of locality lies in the concept of local minimum (or local maximum), which is a point in a function whose functional value is the smallest (resp., largest) within an immediate neighborhood of points. [1]
a local maximum (maximal turning point or relative maximum) is one where the derivative of the function changes from positive to negative; Saddle points (stationary points that are neither local maxima nor minima: they are inflection points. The left is a "rising point of inflection" (derivative is positive on both sides of the red point); the ...