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Differentiable

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A real function f is said to be differentiable at a point P if f is defined in an open neighborhood of P and all partial derivatives of f exist at P. In particular, for a function f defined on some subset D of \displaystyle \mathbb{R} taking values in \mathbb{R}, f is differentiable at P \in D if and only if D contains an open interval containing P and the derivative of f exists at P.

A function f: \mathbb R \to \mathbb R can fail to be differentiable at the point \displaystyle x_0 for the following reasons:

  • f is not defined at \displaystyle x_0, i.e. \displaystyle f(x_0) doesn't exist.
  • f is not defined on some set of points that includes members arbitrarily close to \displaystyle x_0.
  • The derivative f'(x) = \lim_{h \to 0} \frac{f(x + h) - f(x)}{h} is not defined at \displaystyle x_0. Note that this requires at the very least that \lim_{h \to 0}f(x_0 + h) = f(x_0), i.e. any function differentiable at a point \displaystyle x_0 must also be continuous at that point.

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