# Functional differentiation

(Difference between revisions)
 Revision as of 07:47, 15 April 2007 (edit)← Previous diff Revision as of 12:31, 20 June 2007 (edit) (undo) (explanation of Functional differentiation)Next diff → Line 1: Line 1: + == Introduction == + + Functional differentiation means computing or approximating the deriviative of a function. + There are several ways to do this: + * Approximate the derivative $f'(x)$ by $\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$ where $h$ is close to zero. (or at best the square root of the machine precision $\varepsilon$. + * Compute the derivative of $f$ symbolically. This approach is particularly interesting for Haskell. + == Blog Posts == == Blog Posts ==

## 1 Introduction

Functional differentiation means computing or approximating the deriviative of a function. There are several ways to do this:

• Approximate the derivative f'(x) by $\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$ where h is close to zero. (or at best the square root of the machine precision $\varepsilon$.
• Compute the derivative of f symbolically. This approach is particularly interesting for Haskell.

## 2 Blog Posts

There have been several blog posts on this recently. I think we should gather the information together and make a nice wiki article on it here. For now, here are links to articles on the topic.