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© Ogan Gurel (All Rights Reserved)
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Recall the proposed theorem that for any function continuous and differentiable over an interval :


It seemed strange to me that I wasn't able to find any formulation of this theorem in the any elementary calculus or introductory real analysis texts. I was curious to know why the mean-value theorem was universally presented instead of this "variance-value" ; theorem which seemed in some respects deeper.

One answer to this is that the mean-value theorem is more useful, particular in using the calculus in approximations. With the mean-value theorem one can make a linear approximation to the function, by:



A prelude to Taylor's theorem and the general use of power series expansions for functions.

The concept of taking the square of a function (or its derivative) was very intriguing to me. I had originally interpreted this as the variance of a function, but upon further reading I've come across the concept of the norm of a function, as a preliminary to the construction of Banach spaces in functional analysis:

On page 155 of Avner Friedman's Foundations of Modern Analysis, I've found the following inequality (under problem 4.8.10):