Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way

BENOUGH CALCULUS TO GET BY

In this book, we’ll occasionally use ideas from calculus, though no actual manual solving of calculus problems will be required! What will be required is an understanding of some of the basics of calculus, such as the derivative and (especially) the integral. This appendix is by no means an attempt to teach these concepts deeply or show you how to solve them; instead, it offers a brief overview of these ideas and how they’re represented in mathematical notation.

Functions

A function is just a mathematical “machine” that takes one value, does something with it, and returns another value. This is very similar to how functions ...