Numbers and Linear Functions--CNN 3

1. Numbers

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Natural numbers 1, 2, 31,2,3, and so on.

By the way, why isn’t 0 a natural number?

I have no idea. That’s the way people defined natural numbers long ago, and nobody has cared much for changing that definition.

What operations?

There are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

2. Functions

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a function is a bunch of ordered pairs of things, with the property that the first members of the pairs are all different from one another.

Thus, here is an example of a function:

[{1,1},{2,1},{3,2}]

It is customary to give functions names, like f, g or h, and if we call this function f, we generally use the following notation to describe it:

f(1)=1, f(2)=1, f(3)=2

The first members of the pairs are called arguments, and the whole set of them is called the domain of the function.

Thus, the arguments of f here are 1, 2 and 3.

The second members of the pairs are called the values of the functions, and the set of these is called the range of the function.

We can draw a picture of a function, called its graph.

3. Linear Functions

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A linear function is a function whose graph consists of segments of one straight line throughout its domain.

Such a line is, you may remember, determined by any two points on it, say (a, f(a)), (b, f(b)).

What is a formula for such a function?

// Linear functions have a term that is `x` multiplied by some constants.
f(x) = mx + c

The number m which occurs here is called the slope (斜率) of this line. Notice that m is given by the ratio of the change of f between x = b and x = a to the change in x between these two arguments:

$m=\frac{f(b)-f(a)}{b-a}$

These are linear functions whose y intercepts are 0 called homogeneous linear functions have a property:

f(ax+bz) = af(x) + bf(z)

Do ordinary linear functions have any such property?

They sort of do. Any linear function at all has the same property when b is 1 -a. Thus, for any linear function at all we have

f(ax+(1−a)z)=af(x)+(1−a)f(z)