Hands-On Mathematics for Deep Learning

Partial derivatives

A partial derivative is a method we use to find the derivative of a function that depends on more than one variable, with respect to one of its variables, while keeping the others constant. This allows us to understand how a function is affected by a single variable instead of by all of them. Suppose we are modeling the price of a stock item, and the price depends on a number of different factors. We can vary one variable at a time to determine how much this change will affect the price of the stock item. This is different from taking a total derivative, where all the variables vary.

A multivariate function can have as many variables as you would look like, but to keep things simple, we will look at a function with two ...