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Difference quotients may also find relevance in applications involving Time discretization, where the width of the time step is used for the value of h. The difference quotient is sometimes also called the Newton quotient [10] [12] [13] [14] (after Isaac Newton) or Fermat's difference quotient (after Pierre de Fermat). [15]
This expression is Newton's difference quotient (also known as a first-order divided difference). The slope of this secant line differs from the slope of the tangent line by an amount that is approximately proportional to h. As h approaches zero, the slope of the secant line approaches the slope of the tangent line.
In an analogous way, one can obtain finite difference approximations to higher order derivatives and differential operators. For example, by using the above central difference formula for f ′(x + h / 2 ) and f ′(x − h / 2 ) and applying a central difference formula for the derivative of f ′ at x, we obtain the central difference approximation of the second derivative of f:
For example, consider the ordinary differential equation ′ = + The Euler method for solving this equation uses the finite difference quotient (+) ′ to approximate the differential equation by first substituting it for u'(x) then applying a little algebra (multiplying both sides by h, and then adding u(x) to both sides) to get (+) + (() +).
For example, the third derivative with a second-order accuracy is ... An open source implementation for calculating finite difference coefficients of arbitrary ...
The tangent line is a limit of secant lines just as the derivative is a limit of difference quotients. For this reason, the derivative is sometimes called the slope of the function f. [49]: 61–63 Here is a particular example, the derivative of the squaring function at the input 3. Let f(x) = x 2 be the squaring function.
For differentiable functions, the symmetric difference quotient does provide a better numerical approximation of the derivative than the usual difference quotient. [3] The symmetric derivative at a given point equals the arithmetic mean of the left and right derivatives at that point, if the latter two both exist. [1] [2]: 6
An example of the use of discrete calculus in mechanics is Newton's second law of motion: historically stated it expressly uses the term "change of motion" which implies the difference quotient saying The change of momentum of a body is equal to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.