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Introduction to Calculus
Introduction to Calculus — from OpenStax Precalculus 2e.
Introduction to Calculus
Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian-born Dutch runner, has dominated distance running for several years. She became the first runner to win both the 1500 and 10,000 meter races at a World Championship. During the Tokyo Olympics, she joined only one other runner in history when she medaled in the rarely attempted distance triple: the 1500, 5000, and 10,000 meter races. She won the gold medal in both the 5000 and 10,000 meter races and the bronze in the 1500. Hassan's signature racing style is to stay at the back of the pack for much of the race, and then move up during the final laps.
Hassan does not run at her top speed at every instant. How then, do we approximate her speed at any given instant? We will find the answer to this and many related questions in this chapter.
Now you No calculator settles this one, but the pieces of it are computable. Try one below, or type your own.
Symbols used here
Tap any symbol for the full definition, a picture, and what every letter in it means.
Questions people ask
What is a derivative in one sentence?
The slope of the graph at a point, the rate at which the output is changing there. Speed is the derivative of position.
What is an integral in one sentence?
The accumulated total of a rate: the area under the curve. Distance travelled is the integral of speed.
Why are derivatives and integrals opposites?
That is the fundamental theorem of calculus: accumulating a rate and then measuring how fast the accumulation grows gets you back the rate. Integration undoes differentiation up to a constant.
When do I use substitution and when integration by parts?
Substitution when part of the integrand is the derivative of another part (u and du both present). Parts when the integrand is a product of two unrelated kinds of function, a polynomial times an exponential, log or trig function.
Parts of this page are adapted from OpenStax Precalculus 2e (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Condensed and re-explained here; errors are ours. Because its source is licensed for non-commercial use, this lesson is free, sells nothing, and is shared under the same licence.
More in Calculus
LimitsDerivativesIntegralsDefinite integralsTaylor seriesSeries and sumsMaxima and minimaThe chain ruleImplicit differentiationRelated rates and optimisationIntegration techniques: substitution, parts, partial fractionsApplications of integration: area, volume, arc lengthInfinite series and convergence tests