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Partial Derivative

The document discusses partial derivatives and their applications. Partial derivatives represent the rate of change of a function with respect to one variable while holding other variables constant. Some applications covered include optimization problems, equations of state in thermodynamics, image resizing algorithms, and consumption functions in economics.

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Wild Kotz
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12 views6 pages

Partial Derivative

The document discusses partial derivatives and their applications. Partial derivatives represent the rate of change of a function with respect to one variable while holding other variables constant. Some applications covered include optimization problems, equations of state in thermodynamics, image resizing algorithms, and consumption functions in economics.

Uploaded by

Wild Kotz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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variables are treated as constant when taking the partial derivative, so any function

which does not involve x will disappear when taking the partial derivative, and we have
to account for this when we take the antiderivative. The most general way to represent
this is to have the constant represent an unknown function of all the other variables.

Thus the set of functions , where g is any one-argument function,


represents the entire set of functions in variables x, y that could have produced the x-
partial derivative .

If all the partial derivatives of a function are known (for example, with the gradient),
then the antiderivatives can be matched via the above process to reconstruct the
original function up to a constant. Unlike in the single-variable case, however, not
every set of functions can be the set of all (first) partial derivatives of a single
function. In other words, not every vector field is conservative.

Applications

Geometry

The volume of a cone depends on


height and radius

The volume V of a cone depends on the cone's height h and its radius r according to the
formula
The partial derivative of V with respect to r is

which represents the rate with which a cone's volume changes if its radius is varied and
its height is kept constant. The partial derivative with respect to h equals , which
represents the rate with which the volume changes if its height is varied and its radius is
kept constant.

By contrast, the total derivative of V with respect to r and h are respectively

The difference between the total and partial derivative is the elimination of indirect
dependencies between variables in partial derivatives.

If (for some arbitrary reason) the cone's proportions have to stay the same, and the
height and radius are in a fixed ratio k,

This gives the total derivative with respect to r,

which simplifies to

Similarly, the total derivative with respect to h is

The total derivative with respect to both r and h of the volume intended as scalar
function of these two variables is given by the gradient vector
Optimization
Partial derivatives appear in any calculus-based optimization problem with more than
one choice variable. For example, in economics a firm may wish to maximize profit
π(x, y) with respect to the choice of the quantities x and y of two different types of
output. The first order conditions for this optimization are πx = 0 = πy. Since both
partial derivatives πx and πy will generally themselves be functions of both arguments x
and y, these two first order conditions form a system of two equations in two
unknowns.

Thermodynamics, quantum
mechanics and mathematical
physics
Partial derivatives appear in thermodynamic equations like Gibbs-Duhem equation, in
quantum mechanics as Schrodinger wave equation as well in other equations from
mathematical physics. Here the variables being held constant in partial derivatives can
be ratio of simple variables like mole fractions xi in the following example involving
the Gibbs energies in a ternary mixture system:

Express mole fractions of a component as functions of other components' mole


fraction and binary mole ratios:
Differential quotients can be formed at constant ratios like those above:

Ratios X, Y, Z of mole fractions can be written for ternary and multicomponent


systems:

which can be used for solving partial differential equations like:


This equality can be rearranged to have differential quotient of mole fractions on one
side.

Image resizing
Partial derivatives are key to target-aware image resizing algorithms. Widely known as
seam carving, these algorithms require each pixel in an image to be assigned a
numerical 'energy' to describe their dissimilarity against orthogonal adjacent pixels.
The algorithm then progressively removes rows or columns with the lowest energy. The
formula established to determine a pixel's energy (magnitude of gradient at a pixel)
depends heavily on the constructs of partial derivatives.

Economics
Partial derivatives play a prominent role in economics, in which most functions
describing economic behaviour posit that the behaviour depends on more than one
variable. For example, a societal consumption function may describe the amount spent
on consumer goods as depending on both income and wealth; the marginal propensity
to consume is then the partial derivative of the consumption function with respect to
income.

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