Recognizing difference quotients of real functions

Abstract: For a real function

f : [0, 1] o m a t h b b R

, the difference quotient of

f

is the function of two real variables

o p e r a t o r n a m e {D Q}_{f} (a, b) = d f r a c f (b) - f (a) b - a

, which we view as defined on the triangle

m a t h c a l T = (a, b) : 0 l e q a < b l e q 1

. In this paper we investigate how to determine whether a given function of two variables

H (a, b)

is the difference quotient of some real function

f (x)

. We develop three independent methods for recognizing such a function

H

as a difference quotient, and corresponding methods for recovering the underlying function

f

from

H

.

This page was built for publication: Recognizing difference quotients of real functions