# Archive | Calculus

## A Gentle Introduction to Evaluating Limits

The concept of the limit of a function dates back to Greek scholars such as Eudoxus and Archimedes. While they never formally defined limits, many of their calculations were based upon this concept. Isaac Newton formally defined the notion of a limit and Cauchy refined this idea. Limits form the basis of calculus, which in […]

## A Gentle Introduction to Limits and Continuity

There is no denying that calculus is a difficult subject. However, if you learn the fundamentals, you will not only be able to grasp the more complex concepts but also find them fascinating. To understand machine learning algorithms, you need to understand concepts such as gradient of a function, Hessians of a matrix, and optimization, […]

## What you need to know before you get started: A brief tour of Calculus Pre-Requisites

We have previously seen that calculus is one of the core mathematical concepts in machine learning that permits us to understand the internal workings of different machine learning algorithms.  Calculus, in turn, builds on several fundamental concepts that derive from algebra and geometry. The importance of having these fundamentals at hand will become even more […]

## Calculus in Machine Learning: Why it Works

Calculus is one of the core mathematical concepts in machine learning that permits us to understand the internal workings of different machine learning algorithms.  One of the important applications of calculus in machine learning is the gradient descent algorithm, which, in tandem with backpropagation, allows us to train a neural network model.  In this tutorial, […]

## Key Concepts in Calculus: Rate of Change

The measurement of the rate of change is an integral concept in differential calculus, which concerns the mathematics of change and infinitesimals. It allows us to find the relationship between two changing variables and how these affect one another. The measurement of the rate of change is also essential for machine learning, such as in […]

## What is Calculus?

Calculus is the mathematical study of change.  The effectiveness of calculus to solve a complicated but continuous problem lies in its ability to slice the problem into infinitely simpler parts, solve them separately, and subsequently rebuild them into the original whole. This strategy can be applied to study all continuous elements that can be sliced […]

## Calculus Books for Machine Learning

Knowledge of calculus is not required to get results and solve problems in machine learning or deep learning. However, knowing some calculus will help you in a number of ways, such as in reading mathematical notation in books and papers, and in understanding the terms used to describe fitting models like “gradient,” and in understanding […]