Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The sum of two concave functions is itself concave and so is the pointwise minimum of two concave functions, i.e. the set of concave functions on a given domain form a semifield. Near a strict local maximum in the interior of the domain of a function, the function must be concave; as a partial converse, if the derivative of a strictly concave ...
Equivalently, the slope could be estimated by employing positions x − h and x. Another two-point formula is to compute the slope of a nearby secant line through the points (x − h, f(x − h)) and (x + h, f(x + h)). The slope of this line is (+) ().
The term domain is also commonly used in a different sense in mathematical analysis: a domain is a non-empty connected open set in a topological space. In particular, in real and complex analysis , a domain is a non-empty connected open subset of the real coordinate space R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} or the complex coordinate space C n ...
Differential calculus is the study of the definition, properties, and applications of the derivative of a function. The process of finding the derivative is called differentiation. Given a function and a point in the domain, the derivative at that point is a way of encoding the small-scale behavior of the function near that point.
The coefficient a is called the slope of the function and of the line (see below). If the slope is a = 0 {\displaystyle a=0} , this is a constant function f ( x ) = b {\displaystyle f(x)=b} defining a horizontal line, which some authors exclude from the class of linear functions. [ 3 ]
To find the slope of the line tangent to the function at P(1, 1) and parallel to the xz-plane, we treat y as a constant. The graph and this plane are shown on the right. Below, we see how the function looks on the plane y = 1. By finding the derivative of the equation while assuming that y is a constant, we find that the slope of f at the point ...
An important application is Newton–Raphson division, which can be used to quickly find the reciprocal of a number a, using only multiplication and subtraction, that is to say the number x such that 1 / x = a. We can rephrase that as finding the zero of f(x) = 1 / x − a. We have f ′ (x) = − 1 / x 2 . Newton's ...
It is straightforward to show that a vector field is path-independent if and only if the integral of the vector field over every closed loop in its domain is zero. Thus the converse can alternatively be stated as follows: If the integral of F over every closed loop in the domain of F is zero, then F is the gradient of some scalar-valued function.