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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.
The graph of =, with a straight line that is tangent to (,). The slope of the tangent line is equal to . (The axes of the graph do not use a 1:1 scale.) The derivative of a function is then simply the slope of this tangent line.
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.
A differentiable function is smooth (the function is locally well approximated as a linear function at each interior point) and does not contain any break, angle, or cusp. If x 0 is an interior point in the domain of a function f, then f is said to be differentiable at x 0 if the derivative ′ exists.
The graph of the linear approximation is the tangent line of the graph = at the point (, ()). The derivative slope f ′ ( c ) {\displaystyle f\,'(c)} generally varies with the point c . Linear functions can be characterized as the only real functions whose derivative is constant: if f ′ ( x ) = a {\displaystyle f\,'(x)=a} for all x , then f ...
In mathematics, the total derivative of a function f at a point is the best linear approximation near this point of the function with respect to its arguments. Unlike partial derivatives, the total derivative approximates the function with respect to all of its arguments, not just a single one. In many situations, this is the same as ...
In SI, this slope or derivative is expressed in the units of meters per second per second (/, usually termed "meters per second-squared"). Since the velocity of the object is the derivative of the position graph, the area under the line in the velocity vs. time graph is the displacement of the object. (Velocity is on the y-axis and time on the ...
If the derivative f vanishes at p, then f − f(p) belongs to the square I p 2 of this ideal. Hence the derivative of f at p may be captured by the equivalence class [f − f(p)] in the quotient space I p /I p 2, and the 1-jet of f (which encodes its value and its first derivative) is the equivalence class of f in the space of all functions ...