Using cobwebbing to visualize how a linear approximation to a function captures its behavior around equilibria.
Highlighted pages
- An introduction to the directional derivative and the gradient
Interactive graphics about a mountain range illustrate the concepts behind the directional derivative and the gradient of scalar-valued functions of two variables. - Introduction to differentiability in higher dimensions
An introduction to the basic concept of the differentiability of a function of multiple variables. Discussion centers around the existence of a tangent plane to a function of two variables. - The idea of the curl of a vector field
Intuitive introduction to the curl of a vector field. Interactive graphics illustrate basic concepts. - The idea behind Stokes' theorem
Introduction to Stokes' theorem, based on the intuition of microscopic and macroscopic circulation of a vector field and illustrated by interactive graphics. - The components of the curl
Illustration of the meaning behind the components of the curl.
Recent pages
- A birth-death process
Added April 13, 2022 - A stochastic process introduction
Added April 13, 2022 - An introduction to neural coding and decoding
Added April 3, 2022 - More new items
Highlighted applets
Using cobwebbing to visualize how a linear approximation to a function captures its behavior around equilibria.
A bacteria population that doubles every time step illustrates a discrete dynamical system.
Welcome to Math Insight
The Math Insight web site is a collection of pages and applets designed to shed light on concepts underlying a few topics in mathematics. The focus is on qualitative description rather than getting all technical details precise. Many of the pages were designed to be read even before students attend lecture on the topic, so they are intended to be somewhat readable introductions to the basic ideas.
You can browse the pages organized into threads, which are sequences through a subset of pages organized by particular topics. An index can help you find pages discussing a particular term. You can also search through the pages, applets, and image captions. A few pages allow you to change the notation system used to render the mathematics.
We hope Math Insight can help you understand key mathematical concepts. We welcome comments on how we can improve it.