Page 27 - Issue 39

ELITE Vol.1, Issue 39, January 2022
Vol.1, Issue 39, January

Things Every Economics Student

Needs To Know

Menna-t-Allah Hossam Enan - Level 2 - Economics, menatallah.annan2020@feps.edu.eg
If there was one thing I would have wanted to be What is Calculus?
warned about before choosing economics as my Calculus is a branch of mathematics that involves the
major in college, it would be that economics is study of rates of change. Before calculus was invented,
extremely connected to calculus, differentiation in mathematics was static; it could only help calculate
particular. objects that were perfectly still.
However, that is inconsistent with the reality of the
This might come as surprise to all first-year world that we live in. For the world is constantly
students as there is no mention of derivatives in the moving, changing and evolving.
first year whether in the economics courses or in Thus, it is no surprise that calculus is used in nearly
the mathematics courses. every scientific field; from physics, medicine and
However, once you choose economics as your engineering to economics and statistics.
major, you will be in for a surprise with how much How was calculus invented?
you’ll have to use calculus in general and There was a famous controversy between
differentiation in particular , both in economics and mathematicians Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton.
mathematics related courses. over who had invented calculus first. However, modern

But worry not, once you are able to understand the consensus is that calculus was developed in the latter
half of the 17th century by both of them.
logic behind derivatives as a concept, you’ll be Newton first developed calculus and applied it directly
amazed with how easy calculations become. You to the understanding of physical systems in his book
might even come to love them once you realize "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" in 1687.
their function. Independently, Leibniz developed the notations used in
That is why we are going to tackle issues such as: calculus. So, while basic math uses operations such as
what is calculus? How was it invented? What are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division,
the branches of calculus? What are the applications calculus uses operations that employ functions and
of differentiation that we have been unknowingly integrals to calculate rates of change.
using all them throughout our lives? And why is
there a close relationship between differentiation
and economics?

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