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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, the derivative is a fundamental tool that quantifies the sensitivity to change of a function's output with respect to its input. The derivative of a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, when it exists, is the slope of the tangent line to the graph of the function at that point.
For any functions and and any real numbers and , the derivative of the function () = + with respect to is ′ = ′ + ′ (). In Leibniz's notation , this formula is written as: d ( a f + b g ) d x = a d f d x + b d g d x . {\displaystyle {\frac {d(af+bg)}{dx}}=a{\frac {df}{dx}}+b{\frac {dg}{dx}}.}
Another method of deriving vector and tensor derivative identities is to replace all occurrences of a vector in an algebraic identity by the del operator, provided that no variable occurs both inside and outside the scope of an operator or both inside the scope of one operator in a term and outside the scope of another operator in the same term ...
The exterior derivative is a notion of differentiation of differential forms which generalizes the differential of a function (which is a differential 1-form). Pullback is, in particular, a geometric name for the chain rule for composing a map between manifolds with a differential form on the target manifold.
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.
In calculus, the inverse function rule is a formula that expresses the derivative of the inverse of a bijective and differentiable function f in terms of the derivative of f. More precisely, if the inverse of f {\displaystyle f} is denoted as f − 1 {\displaystyle f^{-1}} , where f − 1 ( y ) = x {\displaystyle f^{-1}(y)=x} if and only if f ...
In the calculus of variations, a field of mathematical analysis, the functional derivative (or variational derivative) [1] relates a change in a functional (a functional in this sense is a function that acts on functions) to a change in a function on which the functional depends.