First Derivative Test

In calculus, the first derivative test uses the first derivative of a function to determine whether a given critical point of a function is a local maximum, a local minimum, or neither.

Read more about First Derivative Test:  Intuitive Explanation, Precise Statement of Monotonicity Properties, Precise Statement of First Derivative Test, Applications

Famous quotes containing the words derivative and/or test:

    Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,—thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country.... With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,—it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)