Help me with my maths homework...

[Rath]

zexen_lowe said:

Rath said:
To be honest I'm over calculus so I can't be bothered helping.

I am however interested by the notation everyone is using. Should the differential of f(x) be written as f'(x)? I thought dy/dx notation wasn't used when the original function was written as a function of a variable rather than a variable on its own.

I think (I may be very wrong, though), that both are equally interchangeable, at first you always use f'(x) when you start with derivatives because you're only working with one variable, when you switch to two or more variables you get accustomed to using df/dx and, at least me, always use the latter now, it tells more information than the first one (because it tells you in which variable you're derivating)

 

I know both notations but I just didn't think it made sense to differentiate f(x) into df/dx because 'f' isn't actually a variable, so writing what is essentially the notation for 'f derived in terms of x' doesn't make much sense.