Calculus Essentials (Derivatives, Gradients)

Summary

A derivative measures how a function changes; a gradient generalizes this to multiple variables — the core mechanism behind how models actually learn from data via gradient descent.

• 1Review the basic definition of a derivative as a rate of change.
• 2Work through a simple gradient descent example on a single-variable function by hand.
• 3Learn just enough to intuitively understand 'the model moves downhill on the error surface'.