Fundamentals of Calculus
Benjamin Crowell, Sigurd B. Angenent, Joel W. Robbin
Calculus is the study of rates of change, and of how change accumu- lates. For example, figure a shows the changes in the United States stock market over a period of 24 years. The y axis of this graph is a certain weighted average of the prices of stock, and the x axis is time, measured in years. This is an example of the concept of a mathematical function, which you’ve learned about in a previous course. We say that the stock index is a function of time, meaning that it depends on time. What makes this graph the graph of a function is that a vertical line only intersects it in one place. This means that at any given time, there is only one value of the index, not more than one.