Monotonicity Rules in Calculus
Monotonicity Rules in Calculus
复制标题
DOI:
10.1080/00029890.2006.11920367
复制
发表时间:
2006-11
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
G. D. Anderson;M. Vamanamurthy;M. Vuorinen
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
G. D. Anderson;M. Vamanamurthy;M. Vuorinen
1. RULES FOR MONOTONICITY. In the first semester of calculus a student learns that if a function f is continuous on an interval [a, b] and has a positive (negative) derivative on (a, b), then f is increasing (decreasing) on [a, b]. This result is obtained easily by means of the Lagrange mean value theorem. The functions that the student proves monotone in this way are usually polynomials, rational functions, or other elementary functions. If one is attempting to establish the monotonicity of a quotient of two functions, one often finds that the derivative of the quotient is quite messy and the process tedious. Several authors have developed refinements of this method for proving monotonicity of quotients. The first such refinement of which we are aware is the following one by M. Gromov [11, p. 42], which appears in his work in differential geometry (Gromov’s proof uses only monotonicity and elementary properties of integrals):