(March 15, 2016 at 8:02 am)Alex K Wrote:(March 15, 2016 at 7:56 am)Jehanne Wrote: Thanks; that makes the concept much clearer. When I first took calculus 30 years ago, the class was not taught with infinitesimals; in fact, they weren't even mentioned.
Maybe not exactly in this form, on usually talks about Leibniz's differentials dx or whatever you want to call them. You must have used the Leibniz calculus df/dx and all that in differentiation and integration, right?
My classes used the standard 3-semester textbook, with the introduction to calculus being based upon limits. I am sure that limits and infinitesimals are intimately related; however, approaching things from the perspective of infinitesimals has, for me at least, made things easier to understand.
