Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 34

A fancy name for calculus, with the "more advanced" connotation.

The fundamental concept of calculus!

The reason why the epsilon delta definition is so venerated is that it fits directly into well known methods of the formalization of mathematics, making the notion completely precise.

The derivative of a function gives its slope at a point.

More precisely, it give sthe inclination of a tangent line that passes through that point.

Main motivation: Lebesgue integral.

The Bright Side Of Mathematics 2019 playlist: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ69KEg7ccU&list=PLBh2i93oe2qvMVqAzsX1Kuv6-4fjazZ8j

The key idea, is that we can't define a measure for the power set of R. Rather, we must select a large measurable subset, and the Borel sigma algebra is a good choice that matches intuitions.

Approximates an original function by sines. If the function is "well behaved enough", the approximation is to arbitrary precision.

Fourier's original motivation, and a key application, is solving partial differential equations with the Fourier series.

Can only be used to approximate for periodic functions (obviously from its definition!). The Fourier transform however overcomes that restriction:

The Fourier series behaves really nicely in $L^2$, where it always exists and converges pointwise to the function: Carleson's theorem.

Topology is the plumbing of calculus.

The key concept of topology is a neighbourhood.

Just by havin the notion of neighbourhood, concepts such as limit and continuity can be defined without the need to specify a precise numerical value to the distance between two points with a metric.

As an example. consider the orthogonal group, which is also naturally a topological space. That group does not usually have a notion of distance defined for it by default. However, we can still talk about certain properties of it, e.g. that the orthogonal group is compact, and that the orthogonal group has two connected components.

Generalize function to allow adding some useful things which people wanted to be classical functions but which are not,

It therefore requires you to redefine and reprove all of calculus.

For this reason, most people are tempted to assume that all the hand wavy intuitive arguments undergrad teachers give are true and just move on with life. And they generally are.

One notable example where distributions pop up are the eigenvectors of the position operator in quantum mechanics, which are given by Dirac delta functions, which is most commonly rigorously defined in terms of distribution.

Distributions are also defined in a way that allows you to do calculus on them. Notably, you can define a derivative, and the derivative of the Heaviside step function is the Dirac delta function.

The surprising thing is that a bunch of results are simpler in complex analysis!

Key for quantum mechanics, see: mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, the most important example by far being $L^2$.

Just use limit instead, please. The French are particularly guilty of this.