Calculus is a far-reaching subject, used throughout science, engineering, and many other fields. It was first developed by mathematicians Newton and Liebniz in the 17th century.
Liebniz invented the integral notation that we use to this day, and he also built some of the first mechanical calculators. Newton used his work on calculus as a foundation for much of his well-known contributions to physics.
Calculus is related to the study of extremely small values, and the two best-known skills from basic calculus are integration and differentiation. If you imagine a graphed function, integration is used to find the area underneath that function by dividing the area into tinier and tinier rectangles.
The derivative of a function is its slope at a particular point. Just like the slope of a line is rise over run, or change in y divided by change in x, the derivative of a function is calculated by looking at the change in y divided by the change in x, except looking at only a very small slice of a function at a time.
In general,. Change in function value per small change in x. Of course, the derivative of a function is also a function because it is typically different at different points along the original function. For example,. At this point on the curve, it slopes upwards, hence a positive derivative. Another way of looking at a derivative is the slope of a tangent line at a specific point. A tangent line is a line which touches a function without crossing it at a specific point.
Finding a tangent line to a curve is one of the most elementary uses of the derivative. This image shows the derivative at various points as the slope of a tangent line. When the derivative is positive, the line is green. When the derivative is negative, the line is red. When it is zero, the line is black. Unfortunately, this function only returns the derivative of a single point. While there is no built-in function on the TI Plus and TI Plus to take a derivative in general, you can read more about using an application to enable this functionality here.
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