Differentiability means existence of a linear map such that
This is the Fréchet derivative. Substituting increments on the coordinate axes shows . For the unit direction , the remainder is . Dividing the increment by proves differentiability of the restricted function and gives its directional derivative:
For the supplied rational function, both coordinate-axis restrictions are zero, so . Any Fréchet derivative would therefore be the zero map. But , and hence for nonzero . This contradicts the required vanishing remainder. Thus
In fact every directional derivative exists: along it equals . These values do not depend linearly on the direction, illustrating why existence of directional derivatives is weaker than differentiability.
A function is Fréchet differentiable at when there is a linear map such that
This linear map, which is unique, is the derivative .
For the chain rule, if is differentiable at and is differentiable at , then is differentiable at and . Indeed write and , where , . Since , substitution gives
which proves the assertion, including paths on which .
For , write . Away from the two diagonal lines, and the formula is a composition of smooth functions, hence differentiable. At the origin, , so its ratio to the displacement length tends to zero. Its derivative there is therefore zero: this is quadratic damping restores differentiability at the origin.
At a nonzero point with , necessarily . Along the direction,
The denominator inside the sine is locally an invertible function of , with nonzero derivative . Choose sequences tending to zero for which its reciprocal equals and . The quotients tend to and . Thus even this directional derivative fails to exist, and the function is not differentiable there. Consequently
For , the formula is smooth away from zero. At zero, , so the same remainder estimate gives zero derivative. Hence
No limit of the sine factor itself is needed for either derivative at the origin.
Fix , and take sufficiently small that . For , convexity along the line segment gives
Thus the positive secant slopes are nondecreasing in their parameter, and have a limit as the parameter decreases to zero. The local Lipschitz continuity from part (a) bounds their absolute values by , where . Hence the directional derivative exists as a finite real number and
For it is zero.
Write . Rescaling the parameter in the directional derivative gives for , and handles . For sufficiently small , convexity gives
Subtract , divide by , and let . The finite limits from part (b) give
These are exactly the defining conditions of a sublinear functional. In particular, a directional derivative of a convex function is sublinear; it need not be linear.
At the gradient is . The outward radial unit vector is when . Taking its scalar product with the gradient gives the radial directional derivative
Equivalently, on this plane . At the origin the radial unit vector is undefined, but every unit directional derivative is zero. Differentiating along the unnormalized scaling path instead gives at ; that is a rate per scaling parameter, not per unit radial distance.
Use the usual probability-kernel convention: , , and , in addition to symmetry and compact support. These conditions are needed for the stated finite bound; symmetry and compact support by themselves do not impose normalization or nonnegativity. Interpret the differentiability assumption in the usual Sobolev space sense , or assume classical regularity sufficient for the integral Taylor remainder. The kernel density estimator is
The bias-variance decomposition of mean squared error, followed by Tonelli theorem, yields
Independence and a change of variables give the exact integrated variance of a kernel density estimator
All changes of integration order are justified either by nonnegativity or by the displayed finite integrals.
For the bias of a kernel density estimator, symmetry gives . Taylor's integral remainder, with translations understood in , gives
The Minkowski inequality and translation invariance of the L2 norm imply
where . Consequently we obtain the slightly stronger conclusion
Since , this proves the requested bound. For signed kernels, the same argument has in place of ; the printed bound is not generally justified merely by signed-kernel symmetry. For example, let and . This symmetric compactly supported signed kernel has integral one and , but its fourth moment is nonzero. For a normal density its convolution has nonzero bias at any fixed positive bandwidth. Sending would therefore contradict a bound containing only the integrated variance term.
Writing the requested bound as , differentiation gives when . Thus gives mean integrated squared error of order . With the sharper constant one instead has ; the rate is identical.
A direct heuristic for is to choose a twice differentiable pilot kernel , estimate by the second derivative kernel density estimator
and integrate its square. Its integrated variance contains a diagonal term , which should not be mistaken for the target. A useful corrected U-statistic removes that diagonal:
Its expectation is . Thus smoothing bias of an estimator, rather than the diagonal contribution, remains. For a smooth compactly supported probability pilot kernel, the same variance calculation gives
The second term tends to zero because convolution with a shrinking probability kernel approximates every function. Thus and make the raw squared pilot estimate consistent for the quadratic density derivative functional. If , then
so the diagonal-corrected U-statistic is consistent under the same choice. Consistency already uses the assumed ; the additional third-derivative hypothesis is relevant to more ambitious rate heuristics.
Three bounded continuous derivatives do not justify a general root- estimation rate for . For a smooth perturbation with compact support, the directional derivative is
where the last expression requires a fourth derivative in the appropriate weak sense. A regular root- argument would need an influence function proportional to , with finite variance under . Three derivatives do not supply that condition.
For a more quantitative heuristic, impose the additional assumption , use a smooth Fourier cutoff of width , and estimate the quadratic functional by its off-diagonal U-statistic. The tail bias of an estimator is because the Plancherel theorem weights this functional by frequency to the fourth power. The degenerate part of its standard deviation is : the squared norm of the quadratic kernel scales as . At , these two terms balance at and have size , already slower than ; any additional first-order variance cannot improve that balance. To make both terms requires and , which are compatible only when . This is an illustrative smoothness calculation under extra Sobolev and moment assumptions, not a rate theorem asserted solely from bounded third derivatives. Particular much smoother probability density functions may of course permit root- estimation.
The Lie derivative of a function is differentiation along the flow, while the Lie derivative of a vector field compares a vector with its pullback by that flow. Their index-free expressions are
Here is the directional derivative of the smooth function, and is the Lie bracket of vector fields, characterized by . To see the second expression directly, if is the local flow of , differentiating at gives . This uses the flow definition of the Lie derivative of a tensor field.
The directional derivative along the specified vector field gives
Use the magnitude formula for the curvature of an integral curve of a vector field:
It vanishes on the plane and on the axis away from the origin, consistent with straight field lines there. At the origin the vector field vanishes, so it fails the nowhere-zero hypothesis and this field-line curvature is not defined.
As an independent geometric check, an integral curve of a vector field satisfies , , , giving . Its velocity is and acceleration ; the ordinary curvature of a space curve formula gives the same expression.
For , positive homogeneity and concavity give
After subtracting , dividing by , and taking the one-sided directional derivative at zero,
Quadratic density derivative functional Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
The squared L2 norm of a probability density function derivative measures roughness and appears in optimal smoothing constants. For , its directional derivative along a smooth compactly supported perturbation is . When integration by parts is valid twice, this equals . Thus regular root- estimation requires substantially more regularity than merely estimating a smooth probability density function.
Total differential Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The total differential is the linear map that combines the first-order responses to simultaneous changes in all coordinates. For a differentiable real-valued function at , it can be written
Here is an input vector; denotes the coordinate linear functional . The coordinate formula and the Fréchet derivative describe the same linear map. The defining approximation is
The little o notation says the remaining approximation error becomes small relative to the input norm, across every direction of approach.[ref]
For at , . A simultaneous change gives the linear approximation
The exact algebra is
Consequently the exact change is , and the approximation error is . If both input changes are halved, the linear prediction becomes and the error becomes : the first-order response halves, while the quadratic error falls by a factor of four. The right panel under directional derivative displays this comparison as the displacement is scaled.
For a quick check of differentiability, gives
Dividing by makes this bound tend to zero. The same calculation proves that the tangent plane to the graph of a function at is . It approximates the entire local surface, rather than only two coordinate slices.
The total differential is useful for estimating the combined effect of small input changes without reevaluating a complicated function. For example, if and , then . The exact remainder bound from the displayed polynomial is at most , so this example has throughout that input rectangle. These are deterministic bounds; a variance calculation additionally needs a joint probability distribution and its covariances. A first-order estimate is also local: large changes require control of the remainder, not merely knowledge of the partial derivatives at one point.