Subject - Maths for Data Science

Assignment – Case Study 3

Name – ARAVIND KUMAR REDDY RANGAMREDDY
Student ID - 500195259
Title –

Skills in writing Mathematics and Use of Derivatives in Data Science Problems.

Introduction –

Calculus is a branch of mathematics that involves the study of rates of change. Before
calculus was invented, all math was static: It could only help calculate objects that were perfectly still.
But the universe is constantly moving and changing. No objects—from the stars in space to subatomic
particles or cells in the body—are always at rest. Indeed, just about everything in the universe is
constantly moving. Calculus helped to determine how particles, stars, and matter actually move and
change in real time.

Objectives/Research questions –
1. Describe what derivative is in calculus. Give some simple examples.
2. Describe the importance of derivatives in data science tasks. Provide a simple case of using
derivatives for solving a data science problem.

Findings/Analysis –

Derivative is in calculus:
In mathematics, Derivative is the rate of change of a function with respect to a variable.
Derivatives are fundamental to the solution of problems in calculus and differential equations. In
general, scientists observe dynamical systems to obtain the rate of change of some variable of interest,
incorporate this information into some differential equation, and use integration techniques to obtain a
function that can be used to predict the behavior of the original system under diverse conditions.

The derivative is a way to show instantaneous rate of change which is the amount by which there is a
change in the function at one given point. For functions that act on the real numbers, it is the slope of
the tangent line at a point on a graph. The derivative is often written as,

dy
dx

That is the difference in y divided by the difference in x. Here, d is not the variable so it cannot be
cancelled out.

The derivative of y with respect to x is defined as the change in y over the change in x.

In mathematical terms,
That is, as the distance between the two x points becomes closer to zero, the slope of the line between
them comes closer to respective tangent line.

Derivatives of functions: -

The derivative of different types of function can be derived as follows:

1) Linear functions: — The derivative of linear functions such as mx + c with no higher terms is
constant. When the dependent variable y directly takes x’ value (y =x), the slope of the line is 1
in all places. So, regardless of where the position is.

2) Power functions: — Power functions behave according to their exponent and slope. Power
functions follow the rule that :

3) Exponential functions: — An exponential is the form of abf(x), where a and b are constants
and f(x) are a function of x. The difference between an exponential and polynomial is that in a
polynomial x is raised to some power, whereas in an exponential x is in the power.

4) Logarithmic functions: — The derivative of logarithms is the reciprocal.

 5) Trigonometric functions: — The cosine function is the derivative of the sine function, while
the derivative of cosine is negative sine.

Properties of Derivatives: -

Derivatives can be broken down into smaller parts in order to manage them.
For example,

Derivative Types: -
The derivatives can be classified into different types based on their order such as first and second order
derivatives.
1. First-Order Derivative: -

The first order derivative describes the direction of the function whether the function is
increasing or decreasing. It can be predicted as an instantaneous rate of change. It can also be
determined from the slope of the tangent line.

2. Second-Order Derivative: -

The second order derivative are used to get an idea of the shape of the graph for the given
function. The functions can be classified in terms of concavity.
Derivative Examples: -
Example-1: Find the derivative of the function:

Solution: -

Now, calculate the derivative of f(x),

Now, split the terms of the function as:

Using the formulas,

Example- 2: Find the derivative of 2 tan x + 1

Solution: -

Importance of derivatives in data science:

Derivatives are used by Machine learning for solving optimization problems. Optimization algorithms
such as gradient descent use derivatives to decide whether to increase or decrease the weights in order
to increase or decrease any objective function.

Data Scientists use calculus for almost every model and a basic but very excellent example of calculus in
Machine Learning is Gradient Descent.

Gradient Descent: -
A gradient measure how much the output of a function changes if you change the inputs a little
bit. In machine learning model our goal is to reduce the cost in our input data. The cost function is used
to monitor the error in predictions of an ML model. By minimizing this, basically means getting to the
lowest error value possible or increasing the accuracy of the model. Therefore, we increase the accuracy
by iterating over a training dataset while tweaking the parameters of our model.

For example, we have a dataset of users with their marks in some of the subjects and their selected
further studies for graduation. Our aim is to predict the graduation stream of the person with
considering the marks of the person.

In this dataset, we have data of Swapnil and Priyanker and using this data we need to predict the
graduation stream of Sarang.
Now considering marks in the subject as a gradient and stream as the bottom target. We have to
optimize the model so that the result it predicts at the bottom should be accurate.

By using Swapnil’s and Priyanker’s data we will create gradient descent and tune our model such that if
we give the marks of Sarang then it should predict result of Science in the bottom of gradient and same
for Priyanker. This is our trained model. Now if we give marks of subject to our model then we can easily
predict the stream.

The basic formula that we can use in this model is

y = m*x + b
Where, y = predictor, m = slope, x = input, b = y- intercept
This type of problem can be solved by defining a cost function which determines how good a given line
is. The cost function can be calculated using below equation:

Lines that fit our data better will result in lower error values. If we minimize this function, we will get the
best line for our data.

We use differentiation to calculate slope.

To run gradient descent on this error function, we need to compute its gradient. To calculate gradient,
we need to differentiate our error function. Since our function is defined by two parameters (m and b),
we will need to compute a partial derivative for each.

These derivatives can be calculated as below:

We can initialize our search to start at any pair of m and b values (i.e., any line) and let the gradient
descent algorithm march downhill on our error function towards the best line. Each iteration will update
m and b to a line that yields slightly lower error than the previous iteration. The direction to move in for
each iteration is calculated using the two partial derivatives from above.
The Learning Rate variable controls how large of a step we take downhill during each iteration. If we
take too large of a step, we may step over the minimum. However, if we take small steps, it will require
many iterations to arrive at the minimum.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative
2. https://opentextbc.ca/calculusv1openstax/chapter/the-derivative-as-a-
function/
3. https://www.ipracticemath.com/learn/calculus/derivatives
4. https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/derivatives-in-data-science-
c5d7bd916f17