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The differential was first introduced via an intuitive or heuristic definition by Isaac Newton and furthered by Gottfried Leibniz, who thought of the differential dy as an infinitely small (or infinitesimal) change in the value y of the function, corresponding to an infinitely small change dx in the function's argument x.
In mathematics, differential refers to several related notions [1] derived from the early days of calculus, put on a rigorous footing, such as infinitesimal differences and the derivatives of functions. [2] The term is used in various branches of mathematics such as calculus, differential geometry, algebraic geometry and algebraic topology.
An ordinary differential equation is a differential equation that relates functions of one variable to their derivatives with respect to that variable. A partial differential equation is a differential equation that relates functions of more than one variable to their partial derivatives. Differential equations arise naturally in the physical ...
In mathematics, a differential equation is an equation that relates one or more unknown functions and their derivatives. [1] In applications, the functions generally represent physical quantities, the derivatives represent their rates of change, and the differential equation defines a relationship between the two.
If the function is called f, this relation is denoted y = f (x) (read f of x), the element x is the argument or input of the function, and y is the value of the function, the output, or the image of x by f. [43] The symbol that is used for representing the input is the variable of the function (one often says that f is a function of the ...
Given a simply connected and open subset D of and two functions I and J which are continuous on D, an implicit first-order ordinary differential equation of the form (,) + (,) =,is called an exact differential equation if there exists a continuously differentiable function F, called the potential function, [1] [2] so that
A differentiable function is smooth (the function is locally well approximated as a linear function at each interior point) and does not contain any break, angle, or cusp. If x 0 is an interior point in the domain of a function f , then f is said to be differentiable at x 0 if the derivative f ′ ( x 0 ) {\displaystyle f'(x_{0})} exists.
Discrete differential calculus is the study of the definition, properties, and applications of the difference quotient of a function. The process of finding the difference quotient is called differentiation. Given a function defined at several points of the real line, the difference quotient at that point is a way of encoding the small-scale (i ...