Chapter 1: Differentiation.
Can we
really call calculus an art? Moreover, can we call mathematics an art? Most
mathematicians will agree to the answer: yes. We express ourselves, our creativity
through mathematics. It’s not always about calculation. Read my article ‘why do we need mathematics?’ to better understand
what I believe mathematics is really. I will not agree that the explanation I
had given there was enough. But anyway, I believe mathematics is an art because
it is not based on mere calculations but based on creating new rules, using
them to express what is around us in a more precise and defined manner. Most of
the time, mathematicians would define these rules not for the sake of answering
questions that follow up with our reality. But they just do it, in hope that
their discovery might come in handy to some scientist in the near future. Some
don’t even care about its necessity and for the sake of not expressing
themselves to be someone ignorant of the reality most people scramble through
physics equations or some other kind of scientific material to find the right
place for their equations or mathematical rules to fit in and prove to be
beneficial.
So why would anyone want to create mathematical formulations that are seldom being useful practically. Not just creating, most spend a large part of their life for the sake of mathematics. The answer is simple, because it’s an art. An artist does his work for the sake of expressing himself and for nothing else. If you have gone through my article ‘why do we need mathematics?’ you may feel that what I say here is contrary to what I had said there. But always remember, the view point matters. There in that article, I wanted to show how mathematics can be useful practically. But here in this introduction, I want to tell you why many consider mathematics to be an art. Mathematics is beneficial, but it’s not necessary that it was created for the sake of being beneficial!
Now let’s go
to calculus. The first part of calculus is differentiation. Every good textbook
that teaches calculus start with differentiation; the reason to this will seem
obvious as we go on. But to quench the curiosity of the readers, let me tell
you why we start with differentiation. It is because “It’s easier to analyse
what we have at hand and to know its working mechanism rather than to plan
about building something bigger with it and trying to predict how it would
behave once it’s built”. Differentiation and integration are the two operations
which calculus is all about. Differentiation is the art of splitting the
equation we have at hand into a smaller unit to study a particular property of
it. This “particular property” is the rate at which the original equation
changes for each change in its dependable variable. Confused? Don’t worry, I’ll
elaborate further.
Basics of differentiation:
Let’s say we
have an expression $z = x^2$. It is obvious that $z$ is a function of $x$. We
can infer one more property, $z$ never becomes negative when we deal only with
the real numbers. So how fast does $z$ change as $x$ changes? We can plot a
graph from it, taking $z$ as the Z axis and $x$ as the X axis. Now let’s say we
want to find the value $z(b)$. The value $z(b) = b^2$. Now assume there to be a
number $c$ such that $c > b$. So imagine $b$ gradually increasing to reach
$c$. So at each point of time how do we express how fast $b$ moves to reach
$c$? One obvious method is the difference method. As $b$ increases, let’s say
that at each instant $b$ changes from being $b_1$ to $b_2$ and to $b_3$ and so
on. So we may write, $b_1>b_2>b_3> … >b_n$. Each time we would want
to find how closer it is to $c$. So we may write $z(c) – z(b)$ at any instant
gives the distance between $a$ and $b$. For simplicity, let’s consider $b_2 –
b_1 = b_3 – b_2 = b_4 – b_3 = … = \delta x$. So the distance at any instant $i$
can be written as, $z(c) – z(b_1 + \delta x \times i)$. So if for $i$ instances
the distance covered can be written as $z(c) – z(b_1 + \delta x \times i)$ then
the average speed can be said to be $\frac {z(c) – z(b_1 + \delta x \times
i)}{\delta x\times i}$. Try working around with the $x^2$ example. $\frac
{(x+\delta x \times i)^2 – x^2}{\delta x \times i}$ is the average rate of
change for the duration $\delta x \times i $. We can find that for different
durations we have different results.
So what is
the shortest possible such duration? For every value $j$, it is obvious that
there is another value $j/2$ which is lesser than $j$, assuming $j$ to be
positive and belonging to the set of real numbers. So the shortest possible
duration is zero and we have no other choice! So how do we find the rate of
change at a point? If we use zero, then our calculations would become
undefined. If we use a real number, there should always be a number lesser than
one. So let’s extend
the existing rules to create a new rule which breaks all the old ones! I
have talked about this “extending the old rule-set to a newer ruleset while
coming to calculus from algebra” in the article: calculus vs algebra. Ok the newly extended rule
is, lets define $\lim_{\delta x \to 0}{\delta x}$ to hold the property of both the property of
zero and a property of a finite real number! If you are a physics student,
you would get remained of the particle-wave duality. This kind of necessity to
introduce the “hybrid property” is prominent in most areas, especially if the
older rules fails to explain something. It’s more like an “exceptional case”.
So how do we implement this rule? We all know that $\frac {0}{0}$ is undefined.
So now our first extension is to define $\lim_{\delta
x \to 0}{\frac {\delta x}{\delta x}}$. Now we use the property of any common
real number to cancel off the $\delta x$ in both the numerator and the
denominator to get 1. But the other interesting part is $\lim_{\delta x \to
0}{\delta x} = 0$.
So for a
case where substituting zero in place of $\delta x$ causes the expression to be
undefined, we “solve” the expression first and see if it comes to a definable
point. If it does come, like the above example, we simply assign the value
zero. So this way, $\delta x$ inherits the property of both zero and a perfect
real number. So why is this kind of a definition necessary?
The most
common reason is, we actually choose $\Delta x$ smaller than any system can
measure. If the least count of a measuring rod is $l$, then it is obvious that
$\Delta x << l$ but $\Delta x > 0$. So how does such a value behave
with respect to the measuring system? $\lim_{\Delta x\to 0}{\frac{a\Delta x}{\Delta
x}} = a$. Now if we put $\Delta x$ as absolute zero, we have both the numerator
and the denominator to be zero and ultimately an undefined expression. Why is
$\frac{0}{0}$ undefined? We define division of two numbers the following way.
If $\frac{a}{b} = c$ then, $c$ is the total count of the number of $b$’s that
can be subtracted from $a$. Here, $a$ and $b$ have well defined magnitude. So
when we talk about length, it should be the distance from a point on the number
line to another point. So this “first point” is zero and the second point is
the value $x$. Now the quantity $x$ has some magnitude.
Now what
happens if $x$ is zero? We have a magnitude less quantity. So obviously
dividing that by itself is not defines. What about multiplying by it? That’s
defined! It only means that we want an expression that is “no magnitude” times
“some magnitude”. So this is obviously again “no magnitude”. If we write
$a\times b$, then if $b$ is one we get $a$ as the result. If $b$ is something
lesser than 1 then we get a value lesser than $a$ as the result. A value $b$
lesser than 1 is a fraction that looks like this: $\frac{b}{1}$. So if
$b$ becomes zero, then we retain no part of $a$. Because zero has no
magnitude, it can’t divide any quantity.
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2015 K Sreram, All rights reserved
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