Calculus

What is Calculus?

Calculus is the study of 'Rates of Change'. Calculus as we know it today was developed in the later half of the seventeenth century by two mathematicians, Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. There are two main branches of calculus: Differential Calculus and Integral Calculus. Differential calculus determines the rate of change of a quantity, integral calculus finds the quantity where the rate of change is known. "Functions" are defined by a formula.

~http://math.about.com/cs/calculus/g/calculusdef.htm

The word Calculus comes from Latin meaning "small stone", because it is like understanding something by looking at small pieces. Differential Calculus cuts something into small pieces to find how it changes. Integral Calculus joins (integrates) the small pieces together to find out how much there is.

~http://www.mathsisfun.com/calculus/