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Mathematical Background: Foundations of Infinitesimal Calculus Mathematical Background: Foundations of Infinitesimal Calculus second edition by K. D. Stroyan y dy dy ε dx x dx δx y=f(x) Figure 0.1: A Microscopic View of the Tangent Copyright c 1997 by Academic Press, Inc. - All rights reserved. Typeset with -TEX AMS i Preface to the Mathematical Background We want you to reason with mathematics. We are not trying to get everyone to give formalized proofs in the sense of contemporary mathematics; ‘proof’ in this course means ‘convincing argument.’ We expect you to use correct reasoning and to give careful expla- nations. The projects bring out these issues in the way we find best for most students, but the pure mathematical questions also interest some students. This book of mathemat- ical “background” shows how to fill in the mathematical details of the main topics from the course. These proofs are completely rigorous in the sense of modern mathematics – technically bulletproof. We wrote this book of foundations in part to provide a convenient reference for a student who might like to see the “theorem - proof” approach to calculus. We also wrote it for the interested instructor. In re-thinking the presentation of beginning calculus, we found that a simpler basis for the theory was both possible and desirable. The pointwise approach most books give to the theory of derivatives spoils the subject. Clear simple arguments like the proof of the Fundamental Theorem at the start of Chapter 5 below are not possible in that approach. The result of the pointwise approach is that instructors feel they have to either be dishonest with students or disclaim good intuitive approximations. This is sad because it makes a clear subject seem obscure. It is also unnecessary – by and large, the intuitive ideas work provided your notion of derivative is strong enough. This book shows how to bridge the gap between intuition and technical rigor. A function with a positive derivative ought to be increasing. After all, the slope is positive and the graph is supposed to look like an increasing straight line. How could the function NOT be increasing? Pointwise derivatives make this bizarre thing possible - a positive “derivative” of a non-increasing function. Our conclusion is simple. That definition is WRONG in the sense that it does NOT support the intended idea. You might agree that the counterintuitive consequences of pointwise derivatives are un- fortunate, but are concerned that the traditional approach is more “general.” Part of the point of this book is to show students and instructors that nothing of interest is lost and a great deal is gained in the straightforward nature of the proofs based on “uniform” deriva- tives. It actually is not possible to give a formula that is pointwise differentiable and not uniformly differentiable. The pieced together pointwise counterexamples seem contrived and out-of-place in a course where students are learning valuable new rules. It is a theorem that derivatives computed by rules are automatically continuous where defined. We want the course development to emphasize good intuition and positive results. This background shows that the approach is sound. This book also shows how the pathologies arise in the traditional approach – we left pointwise pathology out of the main text, but present it here for the curious and for com- parison. Perhaps only math majors ever need to know about these sorts of examples, but they are fun in a negative sort of way. This book also has several theoretical topics that are hard to find in the literature. It includes a complete self-contained treatment of Robinson’s modern theory of infinitesimals, first discovered in 1961. Our simple treatment is due to H. Jerome Keisler from the 1970’s. Keisler’s elementary calculus using infinitesimals is sadly out of print. It used pointwise derivatives, but had many novel ideas, including the first modern use of a microscope to describe the derivative. (The l’Hospital/Bernoulli calculus text of 1696 said curves consist of infinitesimal straight segments, but I do not know if that was associated with a magni- fying transformation.) Infinitesimals give us a very simple way to understand the uniform ii derivatives, although this can also be clearly understood using function limits as in the text by Lax, et al, from the 1970s. Modern graphical computing can also help us “see” graphs converge as stressed in our main materials and in the interesting Uhl, Porta, Davis, Calculus & Mathematica text. Almost all the theorems in this book are well-known old results of a carefully studied subject. The well-known ones are more important than the few novel aspects of the book. However, some details like the converse of Taylor’s theorem – both continuous and discrete – are not so easy to find in traditional calculus sources. The microscope theorem for differential equations does not appear in the literature as far as we know, though it is similar to research work of Francine and Marc Diener from the 1980s. We conclude the book with convergence results for Fourier series. While there is nothing novel in our approach, these results have been lost from contemporary calculus and deserve to be part of it. Our development follows Courant’s calculus of the 1930s giving wonderful results of Dirichlet’s era in the 1830s that clearly settle some of the convergence mysteries of Euler from the 1730s. This theory and our development throughout is usually easy to apply. “Clean” theory should be the servant of intuition – building on it and making it stronger and clearer. There is more that is novel about this “book.” It is free and it is not a “book” since it is not printed. Thanks to small marginal cost, our publisher agreed to include this electronic text on CD at no extra cost. We also plan to distribute it over the world wide web. We hope our fresh look at the foundations of calculus will stimulate your interest. Decide for yourself what’s the best way to understand this wonderful subject. Give your own proofs. Contents Part 1 Numbers and Functions Chapter 1. Numbers 3 1.1 Field Axioms 3 1.2 Order Axioms 6 1.3 The Completeness Axiom 7 1.4 Small, Medium and Large Numbers 9 Chapter 2. Functional Identities 17 2.1 Specific Functional Identities 17 2.2 General Functional Identities 18 2.3 The Function Extension Axiom 21 2.4 Additive Functions 24 2.5 The Motion of a Pendulum 26 Part 2 Limits Chapter 3. The Theory of Limits 31 3.1 Plain Limits 32 3.2 Function Limits 34 3.3 Computation of Limits 37 Chapter 4. Continuous Functions 43 4.1 Uniform Continuity 43 4.2 The Extreme Value Theorem 44 iii iv Contents 4.3 Bolzano’s Intermediate Value Theorem 46 Part 3 1 Variable Differentiation Chapter 5. The Theory of Derivatives 49 5.1 The Fundamental Theorem: Part 1 49 5.1.1 Rigorous Infinitesimal Justification 52 5.1.2 Rigorous Limit Justification 53 5.2 Derivatives, Epsilons and Deltas 53 5.3 Smoothness Continuity of Function and Derivative 54 ⇒ 5.4 Rules Smoothness 56 ⇒ 5.5 The Increment and Increasing 57 5.6 Inverse Functions and Derivatives 58 Chapter 6. Pointwise Derivatives 69 6.1 Pointwise Limits 69 6.2 Pointwise Derivatives 72 6.3 Pointwise Derivatives Aren’t Enough for Inverses 76 Chapter 7. The Mean Value Theorem 79 7.1 The Mean Value Theorem 79 7.2 Darboux’s Theorem 83 7.3 Continuous Pointwise Derivatives are Uniform 85 Chapter 8. Higher Order Derivatives 87 8.1 Taylor’s Formula and Bending 87 8.2 Symmetric Differences and Taylor’s Formula 89 8.3 Approximation of Second Derivatives 91 8.4 The General Taylor Small Oh Formula 92 8.4.1 The Converse of Taylor’s Theorem 95 8.5 Direct Interpretation of Higher Order Derivatives 98 8.5.1 Basic Theory of Interpolation 99 8.5.2 Interpolation where f is Smooth 101 8.5.3 Smoothness From Differences 102 Part 4 Integration Chapter 9. Basic Theory of the Definite Integral 109 9.1 Existence of the Integral 110 Contents v 9.2 You Can’t Always Integrate Discontinuous Functions 114 9.3 Fundamental Theorem: Part 2 116 9.4 Improper Integrals 119 9.4.1 Comparison of Improper Integrals 121 9.4.2 A Finite Funnel with Infinite Area? 123 Part 5 Multivariable Differentiation Chapter 10. Derivatives of Multivariable Functions 127 Part 6 Differential Equations Chapter 11. Theory of Initial Value Problems 131 11.1 Existence and Uniqueness of Solutions 131 11.2 Local Linearization of Dynamical Systems 135 11.3 Attraction and Repulsion 141 11.4 Stable Limit Cycles 143 Part 7 Infinite Series Chapter 12. The Theory of Power Series 147 12.1 Uniformly Convergent Series 149 12.2 Robinson’s Sequential Lemma 151 12.3 Integration of Series 152 12.4 Radius of Convergence 154 12.5 Calculus of Power Series 156 Chapter 13. The Theory of Fourier Series 159 13.1 Computation of Fourier Series 160 13.2 Convergence for Piecewise Smooth Functions 167 13.3 Uniform Convergence for Continuous Piecewise Smooth Functions 173 13.4 Integration of Fourier Series 175 x 4 2 w -4 -2 2 4 -2 -4 Part 1 Numbers and Functions 2 CHAPTER 1 Numbers This chapter gives the algebraic laws of the number systems used in calculus. Numbers represent various idealized measurements. Positive integers may count items, fractions may represent a part of an item or a distance that is part of a fixed unit. Distance measurements go beyond rational numbers as soon as we consider the hypotenuse of a right triangle or the circumference of a circle.
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