Home | History | Annotate | Download | only in analysis
      1 /*
      2  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
      3  * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
      4  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
      5  * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
      6  * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
      7  * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
      8  *
      9  *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
     10  *
     11  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
     12  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
     13  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
     14  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
     15  * limitations under the License.
     16  */
     17 
     18 package org.apache.commons.math.analysis;
     19 
     20 /**
     21  * Extension of {@link MultivariateRealFunction} representing a differentiable
     22  * multivariate real function.
     23  * @version $Revision: 811685 $ $Date: 2009-09-05 19:36:48 +0200 (sam. 05 sept. 2009) $
     24  * @since 2.0
     25  */
     26 public interface DifferentiableMultivariateRealFunction extends MultivariateRealFunction {
     27 
     28     /**
     29      * Returns the partial derivative of the function with respect to a point coordinate.
     30      * <p>
     31      * The partial derivative is defined with respect to point coordinate
     32      * x<sub>k</sub>. If the partial derivatives with respect to all coordinates are
     33      * needed, it may be more efficient to use the {@link #gradient()} method which will
     34      * compute them all at once.
     35      * </p>
     36      * @param k index of the coordinate with respect to which the partial
     37      * derivative is computed
     38      * @return the partial derivative function with respect to k<sup>th</sup> point coordinate
     39      */
     40     MultivariateRealFunction partialDerivative(int k);
     41 
     42     /**
     43      * Returns the gradient function.
     44      * <p>If only one partial derivative with respect to a specific coordinate is
     45      * needed, it may be more efficient to use the {@link #partialDerivative(int)} method
     46      * which will compute only the specified component.</p>
     47      * @return the gradient function
     48      */
     49     MultivariateVectorialFunction gradient();
     50 
     51 }
     52