Calculus

Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus

of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the
same way that geometry is the study of shape and algebra is the study of
generalizations of arithmetic operations.
It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus.
Differential calculus concerns instantaneous rates of change and the
slopes of curves. Integral calculus concerns accumulation of quantities
and the areas under and between curves. These two branches are
related to each other by the fundamental theorem of calculus. Both
branches make use of the fundamental notions of convergence of infinite
sequences and infinite series to a well-defined limit.
Infinitesimal calculus was developed independently in the late 17th
century by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Today, calculus
has widespread uses in science, engineering, and economics.[4]
In mathematics education, calculus denotes courses of
elementary mathematical analysis, which are mainly devoted to the study
of functions and limits. The word calculus (plural calculi) is a Latin word,
meaning originally "small pebble" (this meaning is kept in medicine).
Because such pebbles were used for calculation, the meaning of the word
has evolved and today usually means a method of computation. It is
therefore used for naming specific methods of calculation and related
theories, such as propositional calculus, Ricci calculus, calculus of
variations, lambda calculus, and process calculus.

History
Modern calculus was developed in 17th-century Europe by Isaac
Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (independently of each other, first
publishing around the same time) but elements of it appeared in ancient
Greece, then in China and the Middle East, and still later again in
medieval Europe and in India

Ancient
The ancient period introduced some of the ideas that led
to integral calculus, but does not seem to have developed these ideas in
a rigorous and systematic way. Calculations of volume and area, one goal
of integral calculus, can be found in the Egyptian Moscow papyrus (13th
dynasty, c. 1820 BC), but the formulas are simple instructions, with no
indication as to method, and some of them lack major components.
From the age of Greek mathematics, Eudoxus (c. 408–355 BC) used
the method of exhaustion, which foreshadows the concept of the limit, to
calculate areas and volumes, while Archimedes (c. 287-
212 BC) developed this idea further, inventing heuristics which resemble
the methods of integral calculus.
The method of exhaustion was later discovered independently
in China by Liu Hui in the 3rd century AD in order to find the area of a
circle. In the 5th century AD, Zu Gengzhi, son of Zu Chongzhi,
established a method that would later be called Cavalieri's principle to
find the volume of a sphere.
Medieval
In the Middle East, Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (c. 965 –
c. 1040 CE) derived a formula for the sum of fourth powers. He used the
results to carry out what would now be called an integration of this
function, where the formulae for the sums of integral squares and fourth
powers allowed him to calculate the volume of a paraboloid.
In the 14th century, Indian mathematicians gave a non-rigorous method,
resembling differentiation, applicable to some trigonometric
functions. Madhava of Sangamagrama and the Kerala School of
Astronomy and Mathematics thereby stated components of calculus. A
complete theory encompassing these components is now well known in
the Western world as the Taylor series or infinite
series approximations. However, they were not able to "combine many
differing ideas under the two unifying themes of the derivative and
the integral, show the connection between the two, and turn calculus into
the great problem-solving tool we have today".[10]
Modern
The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines
more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics, and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its
logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.

—John von Neumann

In Europe, the foundational work was a treatise written by Bonaventura

Cavalieri, who argued that volumes and areas should be computed as the
sums of the volumes and areas of infinitesimally thin cross-sections. The
ideas were similar to Archimedes' in The Method, but this treatise is
believed to have been lost in the 13th century, and was only rediscovered
in the early 20th century, and so would have been unknown to Cavalieri.
Cavalieri's work was not well respected since his methods could lead to
erroneous results, and the infinitesimal quantities he introduced were
disreputable at first.
The formal study of calculus brought together Cavalieri's infinitesimals
with the calculus of finite differences developed in Europe at around the
same time. Pierre de Fermat, claiming that he borrowed from Diophantus,
introduced the concept of adequality, which represented equality up to an
infinitesimal error term. The combination was achieved by John
Wallis, Isaac Barrow, and James Gregory, the latter two proving
the second fundamental theorem of calculus around 1670.
The product rule and chain rule the notions of higher
derivatives and Taylor series, and of analytic functions[citation needed] were
used by Isaac Newton in an idiosyncratic notation which he applied to
solve problems of mathematical physics. In his works, Newton rephrased
his ideas to suit the mathematical idiom of the time, replacing calculations
with infinitesimals by equivalent geometrical arguments which were
considered beyond reproach. He used the methods of calculus to solve
the problem of planetary motion, the shape of the surface of a rotating
fluid, the oblateness of the earth, the motion of a weight sliding on
a cycloid, and many other problems discussed in his Principia
Mathematica (1687). In other work, he developed series expansions for
functions, including fractional and irrational powers, and it was clear that
he understood the principles of the Taylor series. He did not publish all
these discoveries, and at this time infinitesimal methods were still
considered disreputable.
These ideas were arranged into a true calculus of infinitesimals
by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was originally accused of plagiarism by
Newton. He is now regarded as an independent inventor of and
contributor to calculus. His contribution was to provide a clear set of rules
for working with infinitesimal quantities, allowing the computation of
second and higher derivatives, and providing the product rule and chain
rule, in their differential and integral forms. Unlike Newton, Leibniz paid a
lot of attention to the formalism, often spending days determining
appropriate symbols for concepts.
Today, Leibniz and Newton are usually both given credit for
independently inventing and developing calculus. Newton was the first to
apply calculus to general physics and Leibniz developed much of the
notation used in calculus today. The basic insights that both Newton and
Leibniz provided were the laws of differentiation and integration, second
and higher derivatives, and the notion of an approximating polynomial
series. By Newton's time, the fundamental theorem of calculus was
known.
When Newton and Leibniz first published their results, there was great
controversy over which mathematician (and therefore which country)
deserved credit. Newton derived his results first (later to be published in
his Method of Fluxions), but Leibniz published his "Nova Methodus pro
Maximis et Minimis" first. Newton claimed Leibniz stole ideas from his
unpublished notes, which Newton had shared with a few members of
the Royal Society. This controversy divided English-speaking
mathematicians from continental European mathematicians for many
years, to the detriment of English mathematic. A careful examination of
the papers of Leibniz and Newton shows that they arrived at their results
independently, with Leibniz starting first with integration and Newton with
differentiation. It is Leibniz, however, who gave the new discipline its
name. Newton called his calculus "the science of fluxions".
Since the time of Leibniz and Newton, many mathematicians have
contributed to the continuing development of calculus. One of the first and
most complete works on both infinitesimal and integral calculus was
written in 1748 by Maria Gaetana Agnesi.

Foundations
In calculus, foundations refers to the rigorous development of the subject
from axioms and definitions. In early calculus the use
of infinitesimal quantities was thought unrigorous, and was fiercely
criticized by a number of authors, most notably Michel Rolle and Bishop
Berkeley. Berkeley famously described infinitesimals as the ghosts of
departed quantities in his book The Analyst in 1734. Working out a
rigorous foundation for calculus occupied mathematicians for much of the
century following Newton and Leibniz, and is still to some extent an active
area of research today.
Several mathematicians, including Maclaurin, tried to prove the
soundness of using infinitesimals, but it would not be until 150 years later
when, due to the work of Cauchy and Weierstrass, a way was finally
found to avoid mere "notions" of infinitely small quantities. The
foundations of differential and integral calculus had been laid. In
Cauchy's Cours d'Analyse, we find a broad range of foundational
approaches, including a definition of continuity in terms of infinitesimals,
and a (somewhat imprecise) prototype of an (ε, δ)-definition of limit in the
definition of differentiation. In his work Weierstrass formalized the concept
of limit and eliminated infinitesimals (although his definition can actually
validate nilsquare infinitesimals). Following the work of Weierstrass, it
eventually became common to base calculus on limits instead of
infinitesimal quantities, though the subject is still occasionally called
"infinitesimal calculus". Bernhard Riemann used these ideas to give a
precise definition of the integral. It was also during this period that the
ideas of calculus were generalized to Euclidean space and the complex
plane.
In modern mathematics, the foundations of calculus are included in the
field of real analysis, which contains full definitions and proofs of the
theorems of calculus. The reach of calculus has also been greatly
extended. Henri Lebesgue invented measure theory and used it to define
integrals of all but the most pathological functions. Laurent
Schwartzintroduced distributions, which can be used to take the
derivative of any function whatsoever.
Limits are not the only rigorous approach to the foundation of calculus.
Another way is to use Abraham Robinson's non-standard analysis.
Robinson's approach, developed in the 1960s, uses technical machinery
from mathematical logic to augment the real number system
with infinitesimal and infinite numbers, as in the original Newton-Leibniz
conception. The resulting numbers are called hyperreal numbers, and
they can be used to give a Leibniz-like development of the usual rules of
calculus. There is also smooth infinitesimal analysis, which differs from
non-standard analysis in that it mandates neglecting higher power
infinitesimals during derivations.
Significance
While many of the ideas of calculus had been developed earlier
in Greece, China, India, Iraq, Persia, and Japan, the use of calculus
began in Europe, during the 17th century, when Isaac
Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz built on the work of earlier
mathematicians to introduce its basic principles. The development of
calculus was built on earlier concepts of instantaneous motion and area
underneath curves.
Applications of differential calculus include computations
involving velocity and acceleration, the slope of a curve, and optimization.
Applications of integral calculus include computations involving
area, volume, arc length, center of mass, work, and pressure. More
advanced applications include power series and Fourier series.
Calculus is also used to gain a more precise understanding of the nature
of space, time, and motion. For centuries, mathematicians and
philosophers wrestled with paradoxes involving division by zero or sums
of infinitely many numbers. These questions arise in the study
of motion and area. The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea gave
several famous examples of such paradoxes. Calculus provides tools,
especially the limit and the infinite series, that resolve the paradoxes.
Principles
Limits and infinitesimals
Main articles: Limit of a function and Infinitesimal
Calculus is usually developed by working with very small quantities.
Historically, the first method of doing so was by infinitesimals. These are
objects which can be treated like real numbers but which are, in some
sense, "infinitely small". For example, an infinitesimal number could be
greater than 0, but less than any number in the sequence 1, 1/2, 1/3, ...
and thus less than any positive real number. From this point of view,
calculus is a collection of techniques for manipulating infinitesimals. The
symbols and were taken to be infinitesimal, and the
derivative was simply their ratio.
The infinitesimal approach fell out of favor in the 19th century because it
was difficult to make the notion of an infinitesimal precise. However, the
concept was revived in the 20th century with the introduction of non-
standard analysis and smooth infinitesimal analysis, which provided solid
foundations for the manipulation of infinitesimals.
In the late 19th century, infinitesimals were replaced within academia by
the epsilon, delta approach to limits. Limits describe the value of
a function at a certain input in terms of its values at nearby inputs. They
capture small-scale behavior in the context of the real number system. In
this treatment, calculus is a collection of techniques for manipulating
certain limits. Infinitesimals get replaced by very small numbers, and the
infinitely small behavior of the function is found by taking the limiting
behavior for smaller and smaller numbers. Limits were thought to provide
a more rigorous foundation for calculus, and for this reason they became
the standard approach during the twentieth century.

Differential calculus
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. By finding the derivative of a
function at every point in its domain, it is possible to produce a new
function, called the derivative function or just the derivative of the original
function. In formal terms, the derivative is a linear operator which takes a
function as its input and produces a second function as its output. This is
more abstract than many of the processes studied in elementary algebra,
where functions usually input a number and output another number. For
example, if the doubling function is given the input three, then it outputs
six, and if the squaring function is given the input three, then it outputs
nine. The derivative, however, can take the squaring function as an input.
This means that the derivative takes all the information of the squaring
function—such as that two is sent to four, three is sent to nine, four is
sent to sixteen, and so on—and uses this information to produce another
function. The function produced by deriving the squaring function turns

out to be the doubling function.

In more explicit terms the "doubling function" may be denoted by g(x) =
2x and the "squaring function" by f(x) = x2. The "derivative" now takes the
function f(x), defined by the expression "x2", as an input, that is all the
information—such as that two is sent to four, three is sent to nine, four is
sent to sixteen, and so on—and uses this information to output another
function, the function g(x) = 2x, as will turn out.
The most common symbol for a derivative is an apostrophe-like mark
called prime. Thus, the derivative of a function called f is denoted by f′,
pronounced "f prime". For instance, if f(x) = x2 is the squaring function,
then f′(x) = 2x is its derivative (the doubling function g from above). This
notation is known as Lagrange's notation.
If the input of the function represents time, then the derivative represents
change with respect to time. For example, if f is a function that takes a
time as input and gives the position of a ball at that time as output, then
the derivative of f is how the position is changing in time, that is, it is
the velocity of the ball.
If a function is linear (that is, if the graph of the function is a straight line),
then the function can be written as y = mx + b, where x is the independent
variable, y is the dependent variable, b is the y-intercept, and:

This gives an exact value for the slope of a straight line. If the graph of
the function is not a straight line, however, then the change in y divided
by the change in x varies. Derivatives give an exact meaning to the notion
of change in output with respect to change in input. To be concrete,
let f be a function, and fix a point a in the domain of f. (a, f(a)) is a point on
the graph of the function. If h is a number close to zero, then a + h is a
number close to a. Therefore, (a + h, f(a + h)) is close to (a, f(a)). The slope
between these two points is

Leibniz notation
Main article: Leibniz's notation
A common notation, introduced by Leibniz, for the derivative in the
example above is

In an approach based on limits, the symbol dy/dx is to be interpreted not

as the quotient of two numbers but as a shorthand for the limit computed
above. Leibniz, however, did intend it to represent the quotient of two
infinitesimally small numbers, dy being the infinitesimally small change
in y caused by an infinitesimally small change dx applied to x. We can
also think of d/dx as a differentiation operator, which takes a function as
an input and gives another function, the derivative, as the output. For
example:

In this usage, the dx in the denominator is read as "with respect to x".

Another example of correct notation could be:

Even when calculus is developed using limits rather than infinitesimals, it

is common to manipulate symbols like dx and dy as if they were real
numbers; although it is possible to avoid such manipulations, they are
sometimes notationally convenient in expressing operations such as
the total derivative.

Integral calculus
Integral calculus is the study of the definitions, properties, and
applications of two related concepts, the indefinite integral and
the definite integral. The process of finding the value of an integral is
called integration. In technical language, integral calculus studies two
related linear operators.
The indefinite integral, also known as the antiderivative, is the inverse
operation to the derivative. F is an indefinite integral of f when f is a
derivative of F. (This use of lower- and upper-case letters for a function
and its indefinite integral is common in calculus.)
The definite integral inputs a function and outputs a number, which gives
the algebraic sum of areas between the graph of the input and the x-axis.
The technical definition of the definite integral involves the limit of a sum
of areas of rectangles, called a Riemann sum.
A motivating example is the distances traveled in a given time.

Distance=speed.time
If the speed is constant, only multiplication is needed, but if the speed
changes, a more powerful method of finding the distance is necessary.
One such method is to approximate the distance traveled by breaking up
the time into many short intervals of time, then multiplying the time
elapsed in each interval by one of the speeds in that interval, and then
taking the sum (a Riemann sum) of the approximate distance traveled in
each interval. The basic idea is that if only a short time elapses, then the
speed will stay more or less the same. However, a Riemann sum only
gives an approximation of the distance traveled. We must take the limit of
all such Riemann sums to find the exact distance traveled.
When velocity is constant, the total distance traveled over the given time
interval can be computed by multiplying velocity and time. For example,
travelling a steady 50 mph for 3 hours results in a total distance of 150
miles. In the diagram on the left, when constant velocity and time are
graphed, these two values form a rectangle with height equal to the
velocity and width equal to the time elapsed. Therefore, the product of
velocity and time also calculates the rectangular area under the
(constant) velocity curve. This connection between the area under a
curve and distance traveled can be extended to any irregularly shaped
region exhibiting a fluctuating velocity over a given time period. If f(x) in
the diagram on the right represents speed as it varies over time, the
distance traveled (between the times represented by a and b) is the area
of the shaded region s.
To approximate that area, an intuitive method would be to divide up the
distance between a and b into a number of equal segments, the length of
each segment represented by the symbol Δx. For each small segment,
we can choose one value of the function f(x). Call that value h. Then the
area of the rectangle with base Δx and height h gives the distance
(time Δx multiplied by speed h) traveled in that segment. Associated with
each segment is the average value of the function above it, f(x) = h. The
sum of all such rectangles gives an approximation of the area between
the axis and the curve, which is an approximation of the total distance
traveled. A smaller value for Δx will give more rectangles and in most
cases a better approximation, but for an exact answer we need to take a
limit as Δx approaches zero.
The symbol of integration is ∫, an elongated S (the S stands for "sum").
The definite integral is written as:
and is read "the integral from a to b of f-of-x with respect to x." The
Leibniz notation dx is intended to suggest dividing the area under the
curve into an infinite number of rectangles, so that their width Δx becomes
the infinitesimally small dx. In a formulation of the calculus based on
limits, the notation

∫ba…dx
is to be understood as an operator that takes a function as an input and
gives a number, the area, as an output. The terminating differential, dx, is
not a number, and is not being multiplied by f(x), although, serving as a
reminder of the Δx limit definition, it can be treated as such in symbolic
manipulations of the integral. Formally, the differential indicates the
variable over which the function is integrated and serves as a closing
bracket for the integration operator.
The indefinite integral, or antiderivative, is written:

∫f(x)dx
Functions differing by only a constant have the same derivative, and it
can be shown that the antiderivative of a given function is actually a
family of functions differing only by a constant. Since the derivative of the
function y = x2 + C, where C is any constant, is y′ = 2x, the antiderivative of
the latter given by:

∫2xdx=x2+c
The unspecified constant C present in the indefinite integral or
antiderivative is known as the constant of integration.
 Applications
Calculus is used in every branch of the physical sciences, actuarial
science, computer
science, statistics, engineering, economics, business, medicine, demogra
phy, and in other fields wherever a problem can be mathematically
modeled and an optimal solution is desired. It allows one to go from (non-
constant) rates of change to the total change or vice versa, and many
times in studying a problem we know one and are trying to find the other.
Physics makes particular use of calculus; all concepts in classical
mechanics and electromagnetism are related through calculus.
The massof an object of known density, the moment of inertia of objects,
as well as the total energy of an object within a conservative field can be
found by the use of calculus. An example of the use of calculus in
mechanics is Newton's second law of motion: historically stated it
expressly uses the term "change of motion" which implies the derivative
saying The change of momentum of a body is equal to the resultant force
acting on the body and is in the same direction. Commonly expressed
today as Force = Mass × acceleration, it implies differential calculus
because acceleration is the time derivative of velocity or second time
derivative of trajectory or spatial position. Starting from knowing how an
object is accelerating, we use calculus to derive its path.
Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and Einstein's theory of general
relativity are also expressed in the language of differential calculus.
Chemistry also uses calculus in determining reaction rates and
radioactive decay. In biology, population dynamics starts with
reproduction and death rates to model population changes.
Calculus can be used in conjunction with other mathematical disciplines.
For example, it can be used with linear algebra to find the "best fit" linear
approximation for a set of points in a domain. Or it can be used
in probability theory to determine the probability of a continuous random
variable from an assumed density function. In analytic geometry, the
study of graphs of functions, calculus is used to find high points and low
points (maxima and minima), slope, concavity and inflection points.
Green's Theorem, which gives the relationship between a line integral
around a simple closed curve C and a double integral over the plane
region D bounded by C, is applied in an instrument known as
a planimeter, which is used to calculate the area of a flat surface on a
drawing. For example, it can be used to calculate the amount of area
taken up by an irregularly shaped flower bed or swimming pool when
designing the layout of a piece of property.
Discrete Green's Theorem, which gives the relationship between a double
integral of a function around a simple closed rectangular curve C and a
linear combination of the antiderivative's values at corner points along the
edge of the curve, allows fast calculation of sums of values in rectangular
domains. For example, it can be used to efficiently calculate sums of
rectangular domains in images, in order to rapidly extract features and
detect object; another algorithm that could be used is the summed area
table.
In the realm of medicine, calculus can be used to find the optimal
branching angle of a blood vessel so as to maximize flow. From the
decay laws for a particular drug's elimination from the body, it is used to
derive dosing laws. In nuclear medicine, it is used to build models of
radiation transport in targeted tumor therapies.
In economics, calculus allows for the determination of maximal profit by
providing a way to easily calculate both marginal cost and marginal
revenue.
Calculus is also used to find approximate solutions to equations; in
practice it is the standard way to solve differential equations and do root
finding in most applications. Examples are methods such as Newton's
method, fixed point iteration, and linear approximation. For instance,
spacecraft use a variation of the Euler method to approximate curved
courses within zero gravity environments.