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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]
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 ...
In chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology, a dissociation constant (K D) is a specific type of equilibrium constant that measures the propensity of a larger object to separate (dissociate) reversibly into smaller components, as when a complex falls apart into its component molecules, or when a salt splits up into its component ions.
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.
The finite difference of higher orders can be defined in recursive manner as Δ n h ≡ Δ h (Δ n − 1 h) . Another equivalent definition is Δ n h ≡ [T h − I ] n . The difference operator Δ h is a linear operator, as such it satisfies Δ h [ α f + β g ](x) = α Δ h [ f ](x) + β Δ h [g](x) . It also satisfies a special Leibniz rule:
In principle, the derivative of a function can be computed from the definition by considering the difference quotient and computing its limit. Once the derivatives of a few simple functions are known, the derivatives of other functions are more easily computed using rules for obtaining derivatives of more complicated functions from simpler ones.
Express each concentration value as the ratio c/c 0, where c 0 is the concentration in a [hypothetical] standard state, with a numerical value of 1, by definition. [19] Express the concentrations on the mole fraction scale. Since mole fraction has no dimension, the quotient of concentrations will, by definition, be a pure number.
A well-known counterexample is the absolute value function f(x) = |x|, which is not differentiable at x = 0, but is symmetrically differentiable here with symmetric derivative 0. For differentiable functions, the symmetric difference quotient does provide a better numerical approximation of the derivative than the usual difference quotient. [3]