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The Story of Calculus: Chapter 1: One day, Isaac Newton was bored. He'd just figured out the long-hidden secrets of gravity, and was looking for a new challenge. "Voila!" he thought, "I've figured out how to express triumph in French!" His self-confidence renewed, he set out on his quest for the next great challenge with an increased vigor. Then, one day, it just came to him. "I know!" he said, "I will invent the derivative!" With a firm purpose in mind, Newton set out. Many months passed and many trees were sacrificed as Newton filled pages upon pages with endless calculations, yet nothing seemed to work. "Aha!" he exclaimed one day. He finally realized the problem--he had no idea what the hell a derivative was. So he set out again to figure out just what this derivative of his would be. "Ah! I know at last," he said, still not realizing that his tendency to talk to himself was bordering on social disorder. "We can figure out the slope, the rate of change, of a straight line. But this is the 17th century! No one uses straight lines anymore! Curves are where the biatches are at. The derivative will be the rate of change not of a line, but of a curve." So, first, he wrote the well-known equation for the slope of a line, m:
m = delta y / delta x
And Newton, in a stroke of infinite genius, decided to change delta y / delta x to the infinitely creative dy/dx, which he dubbed the official symbol of the derivative, and placed a cute little limit sign in front of the above equation, such that:
dy/dx = lim delta x --> 0 delta y / delta x
And thus, Newton made what is generally considered the greatest mathematical discovery in a millenium, indicative of the overall incompetence of mathematicians in general during the Dark Ages. And thus was calculus born.
m = delta y / delta x
And Newton, in a stroke of infinite genius, decided to change delta y / delta x to the infinitely creative dy/dx, which he dubbed the official symbol of the derivative, and placed a cute little limit sign in front of the above equation, such that:
dy/dx = lim delta x --> 0 delta y / delta x
And thus, Newton made what is generally considered the greatest mathematical discovery in a millenium, indicative of the overall incompetence of mathematicians in general during the Dark Ages. And thus was calculus born.