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26 ELLASOS, DENMARK R.

DATE SUBMITTED: ________________


BSCE-1A ________________________________ DUE DATE: _______________________
N82 ENG MATH 1 (CALCULUS 1) ACTIVITY
10: 30-12:00 MW 10:30-11:30 F E104

Introduction to Calculus
Calculus is the study of change and motion, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape
and algebra is the study of rules of operations and relations. It is the culmination of algebra, geometry,
and trigonometry, which makes it the next step in a logical progression of mathematics.
Calculus defines and deals with limits, derivatives, and integrals of functions. The key ingredient
in calculus is the notion of infinity. The essential link to completing calculus and satisfying concerns
about infinite behavior is the concept of the limit, which lays the foundation for both derivatives and
integrals.
Calculus is often divided into two sections: Differential Calculus (dealing with derivatives, e.g.
rates of change and tangents), and Integral Calculus (dealing with integrals, e.g. areas and volumes).
Differential Calculus and Integral Calculus are closely related as we will see in subsequent pages. It is
important to have a conceptual idea of what calculus is and why it is important in order to understand
how calculus works.
Limits
All of calculus relies on the principle that we can always use approximations of increasing
accuracy to find the exact answer, such as approximating a curve by a series of straight lines in
differential calculus (the shorter the lines and as the distance between points approaches 0, the closer
they are to resembling the curve) or approximating a spherical solid by a series of cubes in integral
calculus (as the size of the cubes gets smaller and the number of cubes approaches infinity inside the
sphere, the end result becomes closer to the actual area of the sphere).
With the help of modern technology, graphs of functions are often easy to produce. The main
focus is between the geometric and analytic information and on the use of calculus both to predict and to
explain the observed local and long term behavior of a function. In Calculus classes, limits are usually
the first topic introduced.
In order to understand the workings of differential and integral calculus, we need to understand
the concept of a limit. Limits are used in differentiation when finding the approximation for the slope of
a line at a particular point, as well as integration when finding the area under a curve. In calculus, limits
introduce the component of infinity. We can ask ourselves, what happens to the value of a function as
the independent variable gets infinitely close to a particular value?
The graph illustrates finding the limit of the dependent variable f(x) as x approaches c. A way to
find this is to plug in values that gets close to c from the left and values close to c from the right.
To further illustrate the concept of a limit, consider the sequence of numbers of x:

These values are getting closer and closer to 2 (i.e. they are approaching 2 as their limit). We can
can say that no matter what value we consider, 2 is the smallest value that is greater than every
output f(x) in the sequence. As we take the differences of these numbers, they will get smaller and
smaller.

Functions
A function expresses the relationship between variables. Values of these variables can be
numbers or nonnumerical objects such as geometric figures, functions, or even nonmathematical objects.
There are many different kinds of functions, but we will dealing mainly with functions of numerical
objects in terms of x.
A function describes a rule or process that associates each input of the function to
a unique output. When we were first introduced to equations in two variables, we saw them in terms of x
and y

where x is the independent variable and y is the dependent variable. When we have a
function, x is the input and f(x) is the output.

where f is a function of x that doubles any value x assigned to it, i.e.


Commonly functions are denoted by the letter f but this is not a strict notation since other letters
may also be used. Typically the f(x) takes place of the y value to explicitly identify the independent
variable being used in the function.

A fundamental reason why we use this notation is because functions do not deal only with
equations, but as verbal descriptions and mapping one element to another (the natural numbers
corresponding to prime numbers, for instance). Functions are also defined by expressions of at least one
variable. Once we formulate a rule for the expression in terms of the variable, then it is a function, where
the expression is the defining formula for the function.
x is known as the argument of the function. For each value of the argument x there must exist only one
value of f(x) for it to be considered a function. The domain of a function is defined as the set containing
the different values of the argument. The range of a function is defined as the set containing the values
of the function for the given domain.
Vertical Line Test
Functions define a relationship for an expression to have one unique output for each input. For
instance, an x value must correspond to only one y value, but more than one x value can correspond to
the same y value. A way to test this relationship to see if an image on a graph is a function is to use the
vertical line test. If we are able to draw a vertical line at any point on the graph and have only one
intersection point, then the graph is a function. If there is more than one intersection point, it is not a
function.
Odd Functions and Even Functions
Functions can be odd or even. Functions are said to be odd if they satisfy the identity below

which means that whenever the function takes a negative argument (-x), the result is always equal to the
negative value of the function with the positive argument (x).
Composite Functions
Functions not only take on variables as arguments but can also take on other functions as
arguments. For example, given the following functions f(x) and g(x) where

Inverse Function
Some functions have inverses that have the effect of undoing whatever operations the function
had done on a variable. The inverse of a function can be thought of as the opposite of that function.

Derivative
Differentiation is the algebraic method of finding the derivative for a function at any point. The
derivative is a concept that is at the root of calculus. There are two ways of introducing this concept, the
geometrical way (as the slope of a curve), and the physical way (as a rate of change). The slope of a
curve translates to the rate of change when looking at real life applications. Either way, both the slope
and the instantaneous rate of change are equivalent, and the function to find both of these at any point is
called the derivative.
The Geometrical Concept of the Derivative
If you have ever found the slope of a line on a graph, that is the derivative. When we are looking
at curves instead of linear graphs, it gets difficult to find the slope at every point, because the slope is
constantly changing. A way to find the slope is to zoom in on the graph at a point and find the slope at
that point.

A way to find the slope is using the rise over run method, or the formula for slope:

The way to get a better approximated slope, or derivative, is to make the two x values as close as
possible. This is a tedious process when you want to find the slope for many points on the graph. This is
where differentiation comes in. The definition of a derivative comes from taking the limit of the slope
formula as the two points on a function get closer and closer together.
For instance, say we have a point P(x, f(x)) on a curve and we want to find the slope (or
derivative) at that point. We can take a point somewhere near to P on the curve, say Q(x+h, f(x+h)),
where h is a small value. Now we can plug these values into the slope formula:

Solving for this will get us an approximation of the slope, but it still will not get us an exact
value. We want h to be as small as possible so we can get the slope at P, so we let h approach 0.

Limit Definition for the Derivative


This is the slope of the tangent line, or derivative at point P. This gives us the instantaneous rate of
change of y with respect to x.
Integration
Integration is the algebraic method of finding the integral for a function at any point on the
graph. Finding the integral of a function with respect to x means finding the area to the x axis from the
curve. The integral is usually called the anti-derivative, because integrating is the reverse process of
differentiating. The fundamental theorem of calculus shows that antidifferentiation is the same as
integration.
The physical concept of the integral is similar to the derivative. For the derivative, the motivation
was to find the velocity at any point in time given the position of an object. If we know the velocity of
an object at a particular time, the integral will give us the object's position at that time. Just as the
derivative gave the instantaneous rate of change, the integral will give the total distance at any given
time.
The integral comes from not only trying to find the inverse process of taking the derivative, but
trying to solve the area problem as well. Just as the process of differentiation is used to find the slope at
any point on the graph, the process of integration finds the area of the curve up to any point on the
graph.
Riemann Integration
Before integration was developed, we could only really approximate the area of functions by
dividing the space into rectangles and adding the areas.

We can approximate the area to the x axis by increasing the number of rectangles under the
curve. The area of these rectangles was calculated by multiplying length times width, or y times the
change in x. After the area was calculated, the summation of the rectangles would approximate the area.
As the number of rectangles gets larger, the better the approximation will be. This is formula for the
Riemann Summation, where i is any starting x value and n is the number of rectangles:

This was a tedious process and never gave the exact area for the curve. Luckily, Newton and
Leibniz developed the method of integration that enabled them to find the exact area of the curve at any
point.
Similar to the way the process of differentiation finds the function of the slope as the distance
between two points get infinitesimally small, the process of integration finds the area under the curve as
the number of partitions of rectangles under the curve gets infinitely large.

The Definition for the Integral of f(x) from [a,b]


The integral of the function of x from a to b is the sum of the rectangles to the curve at each
interval of change in x as the number of rectangles goes to infinity.
The notation on the left side denotes the definite integral of f(x) from a to b. When we calculate
the integral from an interval [a,b], we plug a in the integral function and subtract it from b in the integral
function:

where F denotes the integrated function. This accurately calculates the area under any continuous
function.
The General Power Rule for Integration
To carry out integration, it is important to know the general power rule. It is the exact opposite of
the power rule for differentiation.

A Brief History of Calculus


The Ancients
Pythagoras (c. 580 - 500 B.C.)
Though not much is known of this mysterious man, it is almost certain that mathematics began
with him. Pythagoras led a half-religious, half-mathematical group who kept most of their discoveries a
secret. The Pythagoreans credited all their work to their leader and their mottos became "Everything is
number" and "He [Pythagoras] himself has said it". Pythagoras came up with the idea of a mathematical
proof, as well as his famous Pythagorean Theorem relating the sides of a right triangle to its hypotenuse.
The Pythagoreans discovered irrational numbers, which to them was a disaster because the existence of
irrational numbers went against their beliefs. However, this discovery led to opportunities for
mathematicians to come."...three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge" - J.R.Lowell
Euclid (c. 300 B.C.)
Few facts have been pieced together about Euclid and in fact not everyone is convinced that
Euclid was one man. Most people believe that Euclid was the leader of a group of mathematicians in
Egypt who wrote The Elements, a collection of books on geometry that organized all that was known on
mathematics at his time. Among the topics covered in the 13 books are: plane geometry, number theory,
irrationals, and the volume of a cone. In recent centuries many of the assumptions made by Euclid have
been proven to be false, however it has been said that the books have had a greater influence on the
human mind than almost any other work. Euclid was younger than Plato but older than Archimedes.
"There is no royal road to geometry"-Euclid
Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.)
Archimedes was one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time. Though he became famous
for many of his inventions, including the "Screw of Archimedes" and many war machines he designed
for the King of Greece, his true passion was for pure mathematics. Archimedes found the sum of a
geometric series in such a way as to indicate that he understood the concept of limits. He also, among
other things, calculated pi; used the sum of infinite rectangles to find the area under a curve; and found
the volume and surface area of a sphere. Archimedes was killed by a roman soldier when the soldier
walked through a drawing of some circles in the dust and Archimedes got mad at him. "He was a great
civilization all by himself"- George F. Simmons

The Forerunners
Pierre Fermat (1601-1665)
A lawyer by day and a mathematician by night, Fermat was a man of obvious genius who never
attempted to publish his findings during the course of his life. Luckily Fermat corresponded with
Mersenne and other mathematicians in Paris and revealed his discoveries. Though Newton and Leibniz
are said to be the inventors of calculus, Fermat certainly had a hand in it. Fermat found a method of
finding maxima and minima which students today would recognize as setting the derivative equal to
zero. Fermat also invented analytic geometry and modern number theory. Fermat once left a note in the
margin of a book stating a theorem (Fermat's Last Theorem) but offering no proof, and to this day no
mathematician has been able to find a proof. "And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it
that the ancients did not know everything."- Pierre Fermat

The Early Moderns


Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Newton actually discovered calculus between 1665 and 1667 after his university closed due to an
outbreak of the Plague. Newton was only 22 at the time, and he preferred not to publish his discoveries.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Leibniz discovered Calculus independently and he was very open with his
findings. This led to a bitter dispute between the two mathematicians later known as the "Great Sulk".
Today it is well known that both men discovered calculus independently of the other, Leibniz about 8
years after Newton. Newton is best known for his work in physics, and especially his three laws of
motion. "If I have made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any
other talents"- Sir Isaac Newton
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
Though Leibniz is credited with discovering calculus after Newton he is thought to be the true
founder of modern European mathematics. Not only was he a great mathematician, he was also a
philosopher, scientist, logician, diplomat and a lawyer. Leibniz is well known for introducing notations
that are still used in Calculus today, such as 'dy/dx' and the integral symbol. It is even attributed to him
that the '=' symbol is used throughout the world. "It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not
stink, and have a sense of humor" - the Dutchess of Orleans, on Leibniz
Euler (1707-1783)
It is hard to believe that a man with 13 children who went blind for the last 17 years of his life
was able to publish, on average, about 800 pages a year throughout his life. Euler contributed to every
branch of pure and applied mathematics and even discovered some new ones. It has been said that any
elementary or advanced calculus text printed after 1748 is basically a copy or a copy of a copy of Euler.
Thanks to Euler we have symbols for pi and e. He also did extensive work on infinite series and amazed
his teacher, Johann Bernoulli, by finding the sum of a particular series. Euler managed, with writers to
help him, to publish even more work after going blind."[Upon losing the use of his right eye] Now I will
have less distraction"-Euler
Fourier (1768-1830)
A French mathematician, Fourier was torn between his father's desire for him to enter the
priesthood and his real interest in mathematics. By the age of 14 mathematics won out. He became
involved in the aftermath of the French Revolution and even became an acquaintance of Napolean's. At
one point he was imprisoned and destined for the guillotine, but he was eventually freed instead. Fourier
is best known for the series that bears his name. He also expanded the definition of a function. Riemann
used the Fourier series to define a definite integral, and the series has also been used for many other
applications to physics. "Fourier is a mathematical poem"- Lord Kelvin

The Later Moderns


Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1885)
Perhaps the greatest mathematician that ever lived, Gauss' talent was recognized from an early
age by his elementary school teachers in Germany. At the age of 15 Gauss entered Brunswick
Collegium Carolinum and there he independently discovered many mathematical laws and theorems.
Gauss made contributions to many areas including number theory, differential equations, conics, and
differential geometry. His work never suffered, despite personal tragedy. Within one year his father,
wife and son all passed away. Gauss is said to have discovered non-Euclidean geometry although he
never published anything on the matter because he did not want to ruin his reputation. "If others would
but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and continuously as I have, they would make my
discoveries."-Gauss
Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857)
For all his genius, Cauchy was strongly disliked by most of his contemporaries, and has even
been described as a narrow-minded bigot. However, he did make some great contributions to calculus
including the first proof of the convergence of a Taylor series as well as a rigorous treatment of limits,
derivatives, and integrals. Cauchy came second to Euler in terms of productivity, filling 27 volumes with
his discoveries. "Cauchy is mad and there is nothing that can be done about him, although, right now, he
is the only one who knows how mathematics should be done." – Abel
Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805-1859)
Dirichlet's idol was Gauss and supposedly he carried around Gauss'Disquisitiones
arithmeticae wherever he went. Dirichlet is best known for his work on number theory and analysis. In
1829 he gave a definition of a function that is still used today. He said that y is a function of x when
each value of x in a given interval has a unique value of y. Later in his life Dirichlet became a friend of
Gauss, and succeeded him as a professor at the University of Gottingen
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) (1824-1907)
Lord Kelvin gained fame and fortune when he invented the mirror galvanometer, a mechanism
that could be used to translate mores code sent over the Atlantic Ocean. A man by the name of
Whitehouse was working on the same project and in an effort to beat Thomson he secretly started using
the instrument. In the end Thomson gained all the deserving credit. Thomson's father taught him
mathematics and at the age of ten he entered university though he did not start university level courses
until the age of 14. He applied math to heat flow using Fourier analysis (which involves trigonometric
integrals) and this eventually led him to his most famous (and lucrative) discovery. Lord Kelvin also
devised the absolute temperature scale that bears his name. "When you are face to face with a difficulty,
you are up against a discovery."- Lord Kelvin
Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866)
Riemann showed an interest in mathematics form an early age but when he first entered
university it was in the faculty of theology, to please his father. However, soon after, with permission
from his father, he switched to mathematics at the University of Gottingen where Gauss was head of
mathematics. A year later Riemann left and went to school in Berlin, for Gauss was unapproachable,
especially to lowly first year students, and in Berlin he was accepted with open arms by Dirichlet. A few
years later Riemann returned to Gottingen and impressed Gauss with a very famous lecture on geometry.
He would eventually become a professor at the university. Riemann's definition of an integral is still
used in virtually all text books today. Riemann died at the young age of 39 from tuberculosis and for this
reason published a relatively small (yet important) amount of work. He left mathematicians to follow the
Riemann Hypothesis, which has yet to be solved.

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