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Multiplicative Infinitesimals

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41–47 of 47 posts

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to use infinitesimals, though, it requires some additional doing for notation. The standard notation for higher-order derivatives (and partial derivatives) needs to be modified in order for them to work (but they do work great once you do this). Instead of the second derivative being "d^2y/dx^2" it is "(d^2y/dx^2) - (dy/dx)(d^2x/dx^2)" and the differentials can be manipulated just like any other enti…

How I like to think about it is that given an expression with a derivative dy/dx, we can always insert an arbitrary variable s that varies with both x and y, so that we can obtain an ordinary quotient (dy/ds)/(dx/ds) by the chain rule, and manipulate it normally with no qualms about what it means. As you say, second (and higher) derivatives can be calculated with the quotient rule.

What I did in my book to keep everything algebraic but not introduce weird notation is just set the derivative equal to a variable. So, say m = dy/dx. Then, the second derivative is just dm/dx.

The advantage to the revised notation is that you can describe things that are difficult or impossible to describe in the other notation. For example, you can legitimately look at d^2y/d^2x (note the placement of the 2 on the denominator to see how this is different). This is a valid ratio under my system but invalid under the standard system (though I actually consider my system to be the standard system just with prior mistakes corrected).

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#42

I find infinitesimals more intuitive than the formal 'limits-based' approach. I'm currently studying my old degree material but using a fairly interesting book: "Full Frontal Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach" by Seth Braver. I like his readable style. His poetic intro finally gave me an intuition why infinitesimals might be useful, compared to the good old reals: "Yet, by developing a "calculus of infinitesimals"…

If you are going to use infinitesimals, though, it requires some additional doing for notation. The standard notation for higher-order derivatives (and partial derivatives) needs to be modified in order for them to work (but they do work great once you do this). Instead of the second derivative being "d^2y/dx^2" it is "(d^2y/dx^2) - (dy/dx)(d^2x/dx^2)" and the differentials can be manipulated just like any other enti…

On the topic, do you know any approaches to infitesimals/differentials that do cotangents and pullbacks as primitives?

In practice, I always end up needing to work in cotangents, but deriving them is always roundabout in terms of the limit definition of pushforwards. Never found a nice way to swap which is primary and which is secondary, but it feels like there should be a clean view of it that way somewhere.

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#43

I find infinitesimals more intuitive than the formal 'limits-based' approach. I'm currently studying my old degree material but using a fairly interesting book: "Full Frontal Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach" by Seth Braver. I like his readable style. His poetic intro finally gave me an intuition why infinitesimals might be useful, compared to the good old reals: "Yet, by developing a "calculus of infinitesimals"…

> why infinitesimals might be useful Ok, I'll ask. Why might they be useful? Is there any situation that you know of where infinitesimals can better attack a problem than the old-fashioned Calculus?

Solving an ODE by separation of variables. With the limit definition this is just a notational trick, requires additional proof to justify, and confuses students. With infinitesimals, the separation dy = v * dx is a rigorous statement, making the logic of the method immediately obvious.

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why infinitesimals might be useful Ok, I'll ask. Why might they be useful? Is there any situation that you know of where infinitesimals can better attack a problem than the old-fashioned Calculus?

Solving an ODE by separation of variables. With the limit definition this is just a notational trick, requires additional proof to justify, and confuses students. With infinitesimals, the separation dy = v * dx is a rigorous statement, making the logic of the method immediately obvious.

I think Gian-Carlo Rota would disagree with you. See Section 7 of

https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the author of this paper? Johnathan Bartlett? If so, I used your calculus textbook to pass calculus at WGU. I had passed calculus in high school and university a long time ago, but when I finally decided to finish my degree I had to take it again, and got to choose my own text book; I liked your textbook best, I can see it sitting on my bookshelf right now. https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Ground-Jonathan-Laine…

Indeed! I'm glad you enjoyed the book! I hope you wrote it a nice Amazon review :)

I did. Glad to know you saw it.

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving an ODE by separation of variables. With the limit definition this is just a notational trick, requires additional proof to justify, and confuses students. With infinitesimals, the separation dy = v * dx is a rigorous statement, making the logic of the method immediately obvious.

I think Gian-Carlo Rota would disagree with you. See Section 7 of https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf

Rota is complaining that differentials are introduced as an ad hoc technique, seemingly breaking the rules. If differentials are taught from the beginning, i.e. y + dy = f(x + dx) where f'(x) is a convenience function, this is not an issue. Of course, there are other issues with teaching differentials, namely why products of differentials vanish. On the other hand, limits aren't rigorously justified in an introductory course either.

Re: Multiplicative Infinitesimals

#47
post #37

I'm partial to Caratheodory's definition of the derivative, which avoid limits like the infinitesimal approach, but doesn't pull in all the extra baggage that come with infinitesimals (if you do it rigorously). djb (yes, that one) has a pretty good primer on it: https://cr.yp.to/papers/calculus-19970403-retypeset20220326....

Oh yes that's a good write-up!

At the very end

> I follow the Kurzweil-Henstock approach to integration. ... I learned about this from advertisements by Robert G. Bartle in the Bulletin and the Monthly.

I had just read https://math.vanderbilt.edu/schectex/ccc/gauge/letter/ so I got that reference :)

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