Hello all,
Background: I finished GCSE maths last year with an A, and I'm revising for GCSE stats at the moment — my exam's next week. I have no intention of taking any more academic maths tests, but I want to expand my understanding, both for electronics and to make my brain work in different ways.
I'm trying to understand some 'higher level' maths (Although I know that this stuff will be mind-bogglingly simple to many here), starting with basic calculus. I just want to check that my current understanding is just about right:
Differentiation is the process of taking an equation (known as a function?) and finding the function that gives the original function's gradient at any given point. There are rules, such as dy/dx of x^n = nx^n-1. Like a function that takes a numerical input and gives a numerical output depending on rules, differentiation is a function that takes a function as input and 'processes' it, giving another function as an output.
Does that sound just about right?
Thanks,
Barnaby
Background: I finished GCSE maths last year with an A, and I'm revising for GCSE stats at the moment — my exam's next week. I have no intention of taking any more academic maths tests, but I want to expand my understanding, both for electronics and to make my brain work in different ways.
I'm trying to understand some 'higher level' maths (Although I know that this stuff will be mind-bogglingly simple to many here), starting with basic calculus. I just want to check that my current understanding is just about right:
Differentiation is the process of taking an equation (known as a function?) and finding the function that gives the original function's gradient at any given point. There are rules, such as dy/dx of x^n = nx^n-1. Like a function that takes a numerical input and gives a numerical output depending on rules, differentiation is a function that takes a function as input and 'processes' it, giving another function as an output.
Does that sound just about right?
Thanks,
Barnaby