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[5] [6] The difference quotient is a measure of the average rate of change of the function over an interval (in this case, an interval of length h). [7] [8]: 237 [9] The limit of the difference quotient (i.e., the derivative) is thus the instantaneous rate of change. [9]
This formula is known as the symmetric difference quotient. In this case the first-order errors cancel, so the slope of these secant lines differ from the slope of the tangent line by an amount that is approximately proportional to h 2 {\displaystyle h^{2}} .
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 ...
A ratio distribution (also known as a quotient distribution) is a probability distribution constructed as the distribution of the ratio of random variables having two other known distributions. Given two (usually independent ) random variables X and Y , the distribution of the random variable Z that is formed as the ratio Z = X / Y is a ratio ...
In calculus, the quotient rule is a method of finding the derivative of a function that is the ratio of two differentiable functions. Let () = (), where both f and g are differentiable and ()
For example, consider the ordinary differential equation ′ = + The Euler method for solving this equation uses the finite difference quotient (+) ′ to approximate the differential equation by first substituting it for u'(x) then applying a little algebra (multiplying both sides by h, and then adding u(x) to both sides) to get (+) + (() +).
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]
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.