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Calculus is Latin for pebble, and has a number of meanings in English:
[edit] In mathematics and computer science
Calculus, in its most general sense, is any method or system of calculation. To modern theoreticians the answer to the question "what is a calculus?" is: any systematic way of reasoning[1].
- Calculus, short for Differential and Integral Calculus, which investigates motion and rates of change. The denotation "the Calculus" is sometimes used to distinguish this from other mathematical meanings.
- Precalculus, a family of mathematical topics that prepare students to begin to study differential and integral calculus.
- the calculus of sums and differences, also called the finite-difference calculus, a discrete analogue of the Calculus.
- In symbolic logic:
- Domain relational calculus, a calculus for the relational data model.
- Functional calculus, a way to apply various types of functions to operators.
- Join calculus, a theoretical model for distributed programming.
- Lambda calculus, a formulation of the theory of reflexive functions that has deep connections to computational theory.
- Matrix calculus, a specialized notation for multivariable calculus over spaces of matrices.
- Modal μ-calculus, a common temporal logic used by formal verification methods such as model checking.
- Non-standard calculus, an approach to infinitesimal calculus using Robinson's infinitesimals.
- Pi-calculus, a formulation of the theory of concurrent, communicating processes, invented by Robin Milner.
- Refinement calculus, a way of refining models of programs into efficient programs.
- Rho calculus, introduced as a general means to uniformly integrate rewriting and lambda calculus.
- Tuple calculus, a calculus for the relational data model, inspired the SQL language.
- Umbral calculus, the combinatorics of certain operations on polynomials.
- the calculus of variations, the study of extremal functionals.
- Vector calculus (also called vector analysis), comprising specialized notations for multivariable analysis of vectors in an inner-product space.
[edit] Other meanings
[edit] References