What are the uses of differential calculus in your life?

spudbynight

spudbynight

spudbynight

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OK - was thinking about this the other day. When I was younger and studying I found differential calculus to be fascinating. I have never once had cause to use it in my life since.

Does anyone ever use it and if so what for?

I am not expecting this to be a popular thread.
 
I don't think I have ever used it, I may have had need for it during PuzzleDonkey or somesuch trials, but managed by other means.
 
I used it as part of my engineering degree, which in turn is linked to my job - although I don't currently use it on a daily basis.

However assuming everything goes swimming with my new job offer (*touches wood*) I may use it a bit more frequently (even if it is in the background of simulation software :p)
 
I use it to solve the Navier Stokes (and inviscid Euler) equations, Stokes, Poisielle and Couette flow. I use it to estimate things, to descretise problems. I use calculus a lot.
 
Sure - I use it pretty much all day every day :)

I develop numerical methods, so I'm always designing new ways to discretise partial differential equations (to describe fluid dynamics, elasticity, fracture mechanics, and similar).

So yes, I use differential calculus a LOT! It comes into pretty much every stage of the development process - from the initial mathematical analysis of the problem, right through to the implementation stage (writing software to solve the physical problems and test the performance of the new method).

I don't really think about it in those terms though - it's just a (very useful) mathematical tool, one among many that I employ as needed in order to investigate the problem. It just happens to crop up very very frequently...
 
I use a fair bit in financial modelling for my job. Mainly Black-Scholes and variants thereof. I don't pretend to really understand it, my job is to just make sure the system returns the figures the analysts are expecting.
 
Nope never used it since A-level maths, something Im quite grateful for, never really got it easily, a bit too abstract for my mind.

Hawker
 
Wow some of you have some cool jobs on this forum.

Ive always wished I was good at math & physics, would have loved to be an ultra-nerd in an engineering lab someplace!
 
Use it very occasionally in my job (writing software for banks) but certainly not every day.
Good job too as these days I've forgotten most of the maths I ever learnt!
 
I use differential calculus now and then for work mostly for function optimization purposes, looking at the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix of the function's 2nd partial derivatives etc.
EDIT: actually, i used to use it a fair calculating dynamics of robotics and mobile agents, although more typical working the other way through integration to estimate displacements.
 
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Duff-Man said:
Sure - I use it pretty much all day every day :)

I develop numerical methods, so I'm always designing new ways to discretise partial differential equations (to describe fluid dynamics, elasticity, fracture mechanics, and similar).

So yes, I use differential calculus a LOT! It comes into pretty much every stage of the development process - from the initial mathematical analysis of the problem, right through to the implementation stage (writing software to solve the physical problems and test the performance of the new method).

I don't really think about it in those terms though - it's just a (very useful) mathematical tool, one among many that I employ as needed in order to investigate the problem. It just happens to crop up very very frequently...
Click to expand...

Exactly this :D I develop numerical methods for simulation of multiphase flows using CFD.
 
Ricochet J said:
Are you a CFD engineer? From the sounds of it, looks like you're writing your own turbulance model?
Click to expand...

I mainly work on the the underlying numerical methods, so it's a bit more mathematical and less application-oriented. The applications vary somewhat... I've not done any work developing turbulence models, but in the past few years I've worked on groundwater flow, poro-elasticity, fracture mechanics, even food freezing... Currently the work we're doing is part of an EU project related to CO2 sequestration. We're doing some modelling work related to predicting the plume of injected CO2, and investigating the possibility of fractures forming in the caprock (due to the increased pressure of injecting millions of tons of liquid CO2)

I mainly work on developing meshless numerical methods (based on radial basis function collocation). CFD isn't a good application for high-resolution methods like these - what you need for CFD is a very high-resolution mesh that solves quickly, and the existing finite volume methods do this well. My methods are developed for problems that are more difficult to solve accurately (or at all...) using traditional numerical methods. For example, at the moment we're working on fracture mechanics - trying to more accurately resolve the stress concentration around a crack tip. Accurate prediction of a growing crack is still a very difficult problem to solve with traditional numerical methods.


... As you can probably guess, I work in academia right now (post-doc)!
 
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Dave said:
Exactly this :D I develop numerical methods for simulation of multiphase flows using CFD.
Click to expand...

:)

Are you in academia or industry (I'm guessing academia if you're working on low-level numerics)?

Are you doing modelling with a VoF type method, or something more exotic? :)
 
I'm forced to use it in physical chemistry, but its more following what others have done rather than applying it myself. My ability to do calculus starts and ends with A level maths. Most of the equations I would wish to apply it to are way to complicated for me to tackle. The down side to a degree in chemistry.

Duff-man - Which Uni you at? I post-doc in chemistry at nottingham.
 
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