Hey, welcome to the Introduction to Differential Calculus module!
This course is all about derivatives. Derivatives are important because they help us understand how a function changes if we vary its inputs: as you may know, they are absolutely critical to build AI systems.
The reason derivatives are so important is that they guide the process of training a model. During training, we are trying to adjust the parameters of a model so that its outputs are less wrong. To do this, we need to know in which direction we should change the parameters of the model in a way that decreases its error. Derivatives give us exactly that.
Over the course of this module, we will go over derivatives of single variable functions to illustrate the basic concepts. We will then extend to multi-variable functions to demonstrate how derivatives are used in practice, e.g. how they are used in the process of training neural networks.
We hope you enjoy this course!