The gradient and directional derivative are illustrated by a level curve plot of a mountain range. The applet interactively computes the gradient and the directional derivative at different points and directions.
Highlighted pages
- Forming planes
A description of ways to specify a plane. Interactive graphics illustrate the concepts. - The idea of the divergence of a vector field
Intuitive introduction to the divergence of a vector field. Interactive graphics illustrate basic concepts. - Developing an initial model to describe bacteria growth
By analyzing some data and hypothesizing rules for cell division, we develop a discrete dynamical system for the growth of a population of bacteria. - An introduction to conservative vector fields
An introduction to the concept of path-independent or conservative vector fields, illustrated by interactive graphics. - Spherical coordinates
Illustration of spherical coordinates with interactive graphics.
Recent pages
- A birth-death process
Added April 13, 2022 - A stochastic process introduction
Added April 13, 2022 - An introduction to neural coding and decoding
Added April 3, 2022 - More new items
Highlighted applets
The gradient and directional derivative are illustrated by a level curve plot of a mountain range. The applet interactively computes the gradient and the directional derivative at different points and directions.
A bacteria population that doubles every time step illustrates a discrete dynamical system.
Welcome to Math Insight
The Math Insight web site is a collection of pages and applets designed to shed light on concepts underlying a few topics in mathematics. The focus is on qualitative description rather than getting all technical details precise. Many of the pages were designed to be read even before students attend lecture on the topic, so they are intended to be somewhat readable introductions to the basic ideas.
You can browse the pages organized into threads, which are sequences through a subset of pages organized by particular topics. An index can help you find pages discussing a particular term. You can also search through the pages, applets, and image captions. A few pages allow you to change the notation system used to render the mathematics.
We hope Math Insight can help you understand key mathematical concepts. We welcome comments on how we can improve it.