Talk:Derivative

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Derivative article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Add new text under old text.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Start a new topic

Article policies

Archives: 1, 2, 3: 2 years

Derivative has been listed as one of the Mathematics good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 10, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
September 9, 2007	Good article reassessment	Kept
January 10, 2024	Good article reassessment	Kept
Current status: Good article

GA Reassessment

Derivative

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Massive effort from Dedhert.Jr and XOR'easter to bring this article up to scratch. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Significant portions, including whole sections and subsections, of this 2007 listing are missing inline citations; the article thus does not meet GA criterion 2b). If someone has access to the books of the biblography section and the requisite knowledge, this is just a matter of finding pages, to my inexpert mind. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just as I predicted it. The article has some unsourced paragraphs during I was adding the citations. Not to mention, they are also some parts that is not understandable per criterion 1a, for example the partial derivative part. Also, the history section, to me, is somewhat not related, as it mentions the history of how the calculus was made; maybe this could be expanded or merge to any other sections, or just delete it literally? I do think there are lot of problems in this article. Pinging more users: @Jacobolus, @David Eppstein, @XOR'easter, @D.Lazard for more comments???? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:25, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article would benefit significantly from an effort to add a gentler informal or semi-formal description at the top, with less jargon, more pictures, and accessible to a wider audience. (A better history section would also be nice.) Other than that, this article seems mostly fine, and this reassessment is IMO a waste of time. Please feel free to add more specific citations if you want. All of this material is easily verifiable and discussed extensively in the cited references. –jacobolus (t) 20:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify jacobolus, are you saying that you feel this article meets the GA criteria, or that there is no need for this article to meet the GA criteria and discussing whether it should is a waste of time? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:10, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying this article seems like a fine Wikipedia article. Like most of them, it could use additional work. Arguing about whether it ticks off some boxes on a made up checklist (a poor proxy for article quality) is a total waste of time. Addressing the specific criticisms raised here isn't going to make the article substantively better, and there are many more valuable improvements that could be made (but also don't have to be; as I said it's a fine article). Knock yourself out though. –jacobolus (t) 02:12, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The second option, then. Thanks for your quick response. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More discussion

@AirshipJungleman29, @Jacobolus: the discussion of improvement may be found in many places: see at my talk and the talk page of the article Derivative. In my talk page, me and XOR'easter discussed the improvement in the section of definition. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to you and to XOR for working on the article. I hope the article will be improved, to the benefit of the readers. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some questions from me regarding the improvement of this article:

I'm looking for the possibility of a scenario about the notation part: should this section mention after the higher derivative? In my opinion, the notation describes many different notations of differentiation, including the high order. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:42, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I wonder why its applications remain stuck at the Differential calculus#Applications. Is it possible to write them down in this article, instead? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:42, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead: what is a derivative?

I believe that the lead should mention early on that there are several related notions referred to as derivative, e.g.,

The classical derivatives of real (complex)-valued functions of single real (complex) variables.
The covariant derivative
The Lie derivative

The lead shouldn't give a complete list, just enough to demonstrate the ambiguity. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul 12:38, 6 August 2024‎ (UTC)[reply]

Umm... if the problem is about the ambiguity meaning, why can't we just extend the usage of {{other uses}}? We may just explain this article is about the derivative in general calculus. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 15:43, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or replace {{other uses}} with {{about}}? Which of these should be in the {{about}}?

Are there any others important enough to warrant a link in the {{about}}? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:31, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a page Derivative (disambiguation). So, none must be in an {{about}} or {{other use}} template. Instead to have many terms in a hatnote, these terms must be added in the disambiguation page, when there are not already there.

I've updated Derivative (disambiguation).

What about the related algebraic term derivation? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, none of the listed terms is ambiguous, and there are all generalizations of the usual derivatives. So, they must be added in the generalization section (if they are not there) with some explanation of the relationship with usual derivatives. D.Lazard (talk) 09:19, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 7 September 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

—————

1F. Change from:

Repeated references to Gonnick 2012 (The Cartoon Guide to Calculus)—SIX appearances in the critical opening sentences of the article—

1T. Change to:

A reputable, scholarly secondary open source for the same material (with checking of content to new source, not just hot-swapping the citations).

—————

2F. Change from:

Repeated appearance of in-citation dead-end URLs in the opening 15 inline citations (rather than to true, article-supporting maths content; instead, links are to book sales sites, Wikipedia pages for the cited book, archive.org / google.com sites with no content presented, etc.)—

2T. Change to:

No links (square bracket or related markup removed), or an added disclaimer in the inline citation text noting the valuelessness of the link to the inline citation (see below), or replacement links that actually take readers to the suggested maths content supporting the text, or more carefully chosen replacement sources that make the useless inline citations and their links unnecessary.

Justifications:

General. Currently, at best 3 of the first 17 inline citations links are actually useful to readers, in that only the 3 convey readers to a separate site that either supports the content appearing (in support of WP:VERIFY), or presents further material allowing deeper explanation and understanding. Please check this 3 of 17 contention; we maintain that useful links do not appear before inline citation [9] to Keisler 2012, and thereafter they revert again to being useless (at least for a time). This density of poor sources at the top of the article indicate us a top down, post hoc attempt to provide any source at all for content earlier created but unsourced. (It also suggests a dedicated period of bibliographic work, wherein presenting bad links within the citation was perceived as being better than presenting no link at all, for these critical opening paragraphs of the article.)

Specific justification, (1) Given the wealth of scholarly web material on basic mathematics, there is no reason to use cartoon guides to STEM content—certainly not as a preponderant source in the opening definitions of this fundamental maths article (Gonick is a maths citation that belongs, at best, in the Further reading section.) Its appearing both does a disservice to readers, pointing them toward a source that is not being used in formal maths education, and then a disservice to the encyclopedia, creating a sense of less-than-seriousness-of-approach, at the beginning of this very important article. As noted, use of this source appears to have been the result of dedicated period of naive, rather than academically informed editing.

Specific justification, (2) Presenting URLs for any citation that takes a young academic reader nowhere of value, e.g.—

= Stewart 2002, to a front matter-only page at archive.org [despite our being registered], 
= Strang et al. 2023, to a book sales site, 
= Thompson 1998, just to the book's Wikipedia page, not to any of its content,
= Etc.—

is a disservice to readers, in that it distracts and disorients, and so wastes valuable educational time; and again, it casts the encyclopedia in an ill light. The links to sales sites should clearly be verboten. I would also say the remaining sites should also not appear, or that their inline citations should be accomplanied by a disclaimer that stops the reader from clicking on the useless link. ("The links appearing in the preceding citation identify the book but otherwise contain no accessible content relevant to the material presented in this Wikipedia article.")

An alternative to all of the above is that the the article be returned to a lower restriction level, to allow for open scholarly editing (realizing that such comprehensive, even if specific, changes noted are burdensome). But it is not in our power to change the protection status of the article, or editorial perspective that sidelining dedicate, good editors is a reasonable cost for avoiding the hassles of reverting vandalism. (But note, there are easily applied tools to ID likely vandalism; it is not possible, yet, to improve the article, as I ask, apart from skilled editors such as the two of us. And as we cannot, we must ask you.)

Bottom line, we can only see the issue of a locked-in-as-weak article, and do nothing about it except write these long requests.

Signed, a former prof, and former registered editor here. 98.193.42.97 (talk) 21:31, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, but we do have a guideline WP:RS, stating a reliable source consisted of author, year of publishing, and reliable publisher. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 00:41, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done Edit requests should have the form "please change X to Y"; if you would to suggest particular source substitutions (in a concrete way, by proposing the concrete addition of a specific reference in a specific location), you are welcome to do so. --JBL (talk) 00:55, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you be more specific about which source you would prefer? If you would like, feel free to copy wikitext to the page Talk:Derivative/Sandbox I just created, where you can work on draft changes. (Or create an account so you can edit any semi-protected page you like.) –jacobolus (t) 01:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Materialscientist protected this page back in 2021 in response to a bout of vandalism by IP editors. @Materialscientist would you consider un-protecting the page, and we can see if the vandals might have given up by now? It's not clear to me why this page should be permanently protected against anonymous editing. –jacobolus (t) 01:50, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(2) Presenting URLs for any citation that takes a young academic reader nowhere of value – Citing physical books seems unproblematic to me, and Stewart's is one of the most popular. A reader who wants to verify the claims made or see more can easily find this book in their local public or school library. For internet archive book links to copyrighted sources, you may need to first "check out" the book before reading the content, hence the gray dotted lock icon, or for some books publishers have requested that the content not be visible at all (such links should probably be removed, leaving link-less citations or e.g. linking Google Books instead). But since this is a very old and static topic, we could certainly also link to freely available scans which would be just as good. For example we could link to Goursat (1904) A Course in Mathematical Analysis, Courant (1937) Differential and Integral Calculus, Piskunov (1969) Differential and Integral Calculus or even Lacroix (1816) An Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus. –jacobolus (t) 02:10, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly is wrong with citing a book by an author who studied mathematics at Harvard and has spent decades writing and co-writing well-regarded expositions of science, mathematics, and history? XOR'easter (talk) 06:11, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are much better sources available. For example, the epsilon delta definition of a limit should be cited to a standard textbook on analysis, such as Bartle. Tito Omburo (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the only source for a fact that is encountered well before a course on real analysis should be a textbook on real analysis. XOR'easter (talk) 20:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How about Calculus texts such as Thomas^[1] that go into Epsilontics? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strang et al. 2023 is not a "book sale site"; it's a free online textbook that offers the option of buying a print copy. XOR'easter (talk) 22:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Thomas, George B. Jr.; Weir, Maurice D.; Hass, Joel (2014). Thomas's Calculus (PDF) (Thirteenth ed.). Pearson PLC. ISBN 0-321-87896-5. Retrieved September 9, 2024.

Remove protection

There id no need for this article to be protected. 107.119.57.63 (talk) 21:36, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

is

107.119.57.63 (talk) 21:37, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article's edit history shows the data of edit-warring by some IPs and users. That is why the article is protected. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:41, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Derivative can't be deceptive

@D.Lazard I had just think through and finally came to some understanding on what derivative can be. And what for Calculus is used in general. First of all I don't understand why this Article is protected by by @Materialscientist. I don't understand the real potential that lies behind the wall, I mean the conception what Wikipedia has in fact and by the fact.

@D.Lazard / @Materialscientist - When I say the circle, for πr² - 2πr is the derivative. But by the view point on the same plane, the plane I am considering Rectangle, when I say Rectangle it is that I am considering a Radical Approach, that's the approach been followed here, as per your CEO & Founder - Jimmy Wales. More than that, I have good faith and I rely on anything that is Rectangle not a Square so, the science can endure over there. So, by viewpoint from the same plane where circle is depicted I could only see at the max of half part of the circle, so the actual derivative is πr as the line length of what it is πr

All the tangents will have the 90^° angle with the line drawn from the point where tangent touches the touch-point on the circle and the line drawn from it to the circle's center point ( distance - r ), if I am right.

Point whether it is exterior or interior by which we define everything else in the derivative and concerned limits by the fact.

Whenever there is a Semi-Protected Edit, having the necessary talk is required,- the real talk, the discussion

As per my conclusion whatever you do as derivative is in the range of +πr to -πr. That's an idea, what do you say D.Lazard.

And I am checking on one among the uncomputability problem - πθ uncomputability problem, in order to have some thoughts in mind.

Good day team!

—2405:201:D02B:60A3:3ACE:ACB4:8B25:6E59 (talk) 14:50, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When there is no Y axis as such, that's when the range is within +πr to -πr. See the quadrants well defined in Mathematics and in the same way f(x) as well. Your concerns are not major as such and it's simple that 2πr is perimeter of the circle and 4πr² is surface of the sphere.

Since the day one of universe, the problem is α β γ. Our LHC & it's researches will decide including everything else.

About point interior or exterior is just collateral. Linearity and it's abstraction gives the major salvation.

You worry about πθ uncomputability problem, there is other one as well so called Church Thesis - that's starts with capital Gamma - Γ and some notation.

Derivative is all about what we could touch, in the abstraction level [or] in the real physical level.

Thanks & Happy Writing.

—~2025-42941-70 (talk) 23:12, 27 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't this article at least mention antiderivatives and the fundamental theorem of calculus?

It seems to me like a glaring oversight. –jacobolus (t) 15:52, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added a few sentences. They probably need expansion/redoing. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 22:19, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Differential calculus into this

Should the content of the article Differential calculus be merged into this, or perhaps Differential calculus be redirected to Derivative? Consensus is needed. Mechanikin (talk) 15:30, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Thomas, George B. Jr.; Weir, Maurice D.; Hass, Joel (2014). Thomas's Calculus (PDF) (Thirteenth ed.). Pearson PLC. ISBN 0-321-87896-5. Retrieved September 9, 2024.

[1]