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Calculus I - Lesson 2: A continuation from first principles


Dave

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Cheers :D

 

What I find hilarious (but also craptastic) is that I have one (count it, one) stylesheet that works for every browser and non-screen device known to humanity EXCEPT for Internet Explorer, which has to have TWO extra style sheets and some js to make it look non-shit.

 

So as revenge the site displays an IE-only message on the front page... heh heh heh.

 

[/offtopic]

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Just some comments on the nomenclature being employed.

 

The differential of a function y = xn for any value of n is n*xn-1[/sup'].

You might want to stick with the word derivative here (i.e. the derivative of a function...) since the word differential is reserved for something else.

 

[math]\frac{dy}{dx}[/math]

 

The first thing to remember is that the "d" is not a variable; it's actually an operator, so you can't simply cancel it from the fraction to give y/x (otherwise things would make no sense). The second thing to notice is the interpretation - spoken aloud it means "the differential (i.e. gradient) of y with respect to x".

"d" isn't really an operator. The operator here is d/dx. Again, the word differential is misused here.

 

I hope my critiques are helpful.

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Fair enough.

 

There's obviously going to be some mistakes in my wording, and I've been misinformed about the operator. But then again I should technically have said "any real value of n". It's unlikely that anyone will really consider the operator side of it.

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I have been doing a maths course as part of my current BSc, and the only thing that challenged me so far was validating rearrangements of the limits on the feasible area in a linear regression programming problem. And that was only because it's explained in a craptastic way.

 

So I think I'll be working through these threads again too! :)

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