Derivatives and Definite Integrals

Word Count (excluding title and works cited page): 628

Calculus pioneers of the seventeenth century such as Leibniz, Newton, Barrow, Fermat, Pascal, Cavelieri, and Wallis sought to find solutions to puzzling mathematical problems. Specifically, they expressed the functions for derivatives and definite integrals. Their areas of interest involved discussions on tangents, velocity and acceleration, maximums and minimums, and area. This introductory paper shall briefly introduce four specific questions related to these problems and the solutions that were sought.

In calculus, how a function changes in response to input is measured using a derivative. The derivative of a function is the result of mathematical differentiation. It measures the instantaneous rate of change of one certain quantity in relationship to another and is expressed as df (x)/dx. It can be interpreted geometrically as the slope of the curve of a mathematical function f (x) plotted as a function...
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