Global slopes

A. Bali
September 12, 2020

1 Motivation
A regular tool use to calculate slopes is the derivative, or the differential.
However, the local nature of these operations make it a bit inappropriate to
generally analyze functions on a wider interval, or even discrete functions. We
should therefore try to give a more global generalization of the derivative.

2 Notation
• [a..b] is the set of all integers between a and b, including a and b. More
Sb
formally, [a..b] = {k} = {k ∈ Z : a ≤ k ≤ b} = [a, b] ∩ Z.
k=a

• Any sequence (ck )bk=a will be written as ca..b or simply c if each term ck
is only contextually defined if k ∈ [a..b].

– If ck is only contextually defined if k in some integer interval [a..b]

with two integers a and b, then we write that D(c) = [a..b].
– Likewise, if some function f is defined over S, then we also write that
D(f ) = S.

1
3 @ operator
3.1 Definition for functions
For any function g, we define µ(D(g)) as sup D(g) − inf D(g). For all function
ϕ and π, we define @(ϕ, π) for all x ∈ D(ϕ) as such :

ϕ(x) − ϕ(y) ϕ(y) − ϕ(x)

Z Z
@(ϕ, π)(x) = dy + dy
π(x − y)µ(D(π)) π(y − x)µ(D(π))
D(x+π)\[x,+∞) D(x+π)\(−∞,x]

where x + π is shortcut for t 7→ x + π(t).

Let any function f ∈ C 1 and sequence of functions g0..n and any function µ
such that :
1. For all n ∈ N∗ , {0} ( D(gn+1 ) ⊆ D(gn )
2. gn (x) > 0 for all x ∈ D(gn ).
3. lim gn (x) ∼ x and lim D(gn ) = {0}.
n→∞ x→0 n→∞
R
4. For all n ∈ N, D(gn )
dt = µ(D(gn )).

The interest for @ here is that one can prove that, with such f and g0..n , we
have, for all x ∈ D(f ), the following result :

f 0 (x) = lim @(f, gn )(x)

n→∞

Proof Here, lim @(f, gn )(x) can be expanded as such :

n→∞

f (x) − f (y) f (y) − f (x)

Z Z
lim @(f, gn )(x) = lim dy+ dy
n→∞ n→∞ gn (x − y)µ(D(gn )) gn (y − x)µ(D(gn ))
D(x+gn )\[x,+∞) D(x+gn )\(−∞,x]

Since lim gn (x) ∼ x and that D(g) approaches {0}, we have :

n→∞ x→0

f (x) − f (y) f (y) − f (x)

Z Z
1 1
lim @(f, gn )(x) = lim dy+ dy
n→∞ n→∞ µ(D(gn )) x−y µ(D(gn )) y−x
D(x+gn )\[x,+∞) D(x+gn )\(−∞,x]

However, (f (x) − f (y))/(x − y) → f 0 (x) as y → x− and (f (y) − f (x))/(y −

x) → f 0 (x) as y → x+ , and because we have lim D(gn ) = {0}, we have :
n→∞

f 0 (x)
Z
4 (3.1)
 lim @(f, gn )(x) = lim dy ==== f 0 (x) 
n→∞ n→∞ µ(D(gn )) D(x+gn )

2
3.2 Definition for sequences
For all sequences a and b, we define @ in a similar way than for functions for
all n ∈ D(a), except we don’t use integrals but sums :
X an − am X am − an
@(a, b)(n) = +
bn−m bm−n
m<n m>n
m∈D(n+b) m∈D(n+b)

This operation allows to do this sort of graphs :

Top : Plot of a sequence a1..166

Bottom : Plot of @ a1..166 , (1 + n2 )166
n=1