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Differential Calculus Essay

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Differential Calculus
Differential calculus is one of the subfields of calculus, and deals with the rate of change of various quantities. The other field of calculus is integral calculus, the two fields being the inverse of each other. One way to understand the relationship is to observe that differential calculus cuts a whole into tiny pieces, to find out how quickly it changes, while integral calculus put the small pieces together to find the whole.
Differential calculus is the study of rate of change, using the tools of limits and derivatives. Since differential calculus studies rates of change, any function that changes continuously can be differentiated.
To determine the rate of change between two points on a graph, you calculate the slope of the secant intersecting these two points (see below). The secant is a linear function of the form (y=ax+b).Therefore, the slope is constant, and can be determined as: a=(y_2-y_1)/(x_2-x_1 )=∆y/∆x, ∆x and ∆y is read as the change in x in respect of the change in y. …show more content…

The slope of the tangent is equivalent to the instantaneous rate of the change of the function at the point, at which the tangent touches the function curve. The instantaneous rate of change is the ∆y is the distance between f(x) and f(x + ∆x). ∆x is the distance between x and (x + ∆x).
The formula for calculating the average slope between A and B (secant line) is(f(x+∆x)-f(x))/((x+∆x)-x)=(f(x+∆x)-f(x))/∆x, where ∆x accounts for the distance between the two points, f(x+∆x ) and

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