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The second derivative of a function f can be used to determine the concavity of the graph of f. [2] A function whose second derivative is positive is said to be concave up (also referred to as convex), meaning that the tangent line near the point where it touches the function will lie below the graph of the function.
The order of the differential equation is the highest order of derivative of the unknown function that appears in the differential equation. For example, an equation containing only first-order derivatives is a first-order differential equation, an equation containing the second-order derivative is a second-order differential equation, and so on.
See the example figure on the right. Appended to this nonlinear edge is an edge weight that is the second-order partial derivative of the nonlinear node in relation to its predecessors. This nonlinear edge is subsequently pushed down to further predecessors in such a way that when it reaches the independent nodes, its edge weight is the second ...
The higher order derivatives can be applied in physics; for example, while the first derivative of the position of a moving object with respect to time is the object's velocity, how the position changes as time advances, the second derivative is the object's acceleration, how the velocity changes as time advances.
For real-valued functions of a real variable, y = f(x), its ordinary derivative dy/dx is geometrically the gradient of the tangent line to the curve y = f(x) at all points in the domain. Partial derivatives extend this idea to tangent hyperplanes to a curve. The second order partial derivatives can be calculated for every pair of variables:
For a real-valued function of a single real variable, the derivative of a function at a point generally determines the best linear approximation to the function at that point. Differential calculus and integral calculus are connected by the fundamental theorem of calculus. This states that differentiation is the reverse process to integration.
The calculus of variations may be said to begin with Newton's minimal resistance problem in 1687, followed by the brachistochrone curve problem raised by Johann Bernoulli (1696). [2] It immediately occupied the attention of Jacob Bernoulli and the Marquis de l'Hôpital , but Leonhard Euler first elaborated the subject, beginning in 1733.
For example, the second order partial derivatives of a scalar function of n variables can be organized into an n by n matrix, the Hessian matrix. One of the subtle points is that the higher derivatives are not intrinsically defined, and depend on the choice of the coordinates in a complicated fashion (in particular, the Hessian matrix of a ...