Eli5: why are derivatives useful?

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I don’t mean in which cases I can use them, nor how they work. I know how they work (at least at a basic level, the derivative of ax\^b is abx\^(b-1), but I mean… why is a function that does those steps useful to solve any problem? It really seems like a random choice of operations.

In: Mathematics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I wish they taught modeling in high schools. It would help immensely with this type of confusion.

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