(Untitled)
There's a really great/bad pun in the comment thread of this today that's just tickled my funny bone. "Descartes got there first"...."Before the horse, you mean?" *snork* as far as the cartoon goes, i *think* the term derived or derivative has to do with calculus but i can't remember back that far. I think i put up a mental block against calculus
( Read more... )
Comments 2
Newton and Leibniz were famous rivals for the invention of calculus. Loosely speaking we can thing of calculus as being a method of studying how systems change with two parts (which are in a mathematical sense the opposite of each other):
Integration is used to calculate how much the changes add up to over time (the integral).
Differentiation is used to calculate the rate at which something changes (the differential or derivative).
The cartoon is a pun on this latter term.
Reply
Thanks for the explanation. I hoped you would jump in there! My head is still threatening to explode when i think of calculus, but yes, i thought i vaguely remembered it being a term so did mildly appreciate the cartoon. However the other pun pleased me greatly.
Reply
Leave a comment