FUNCTION

In mathematics, a function is a mathematical object that produces an output, when given an input

- it could be a number, a vector, or anything that can exist inside a set of things.

So a function is like a machine, that takes values of x and returns an output y.

The set of all values that x can have is called the domain.

The set that contains every value that y can have is called the codomain.

TYPES OF FUNCTIONS a very poor explanation !!!!!!!!!!

Elementary functions - The functions that are usually studied in school: fractions, square roots, the
sine, cosine and tangent functions and some other functions.

Non-elementary functions - Most of them do not use operations that we don't learn in school (like +
or -, or powers). Many integrals are non-elementary.

Inverse functions - Functions that undo another function. For example: if F(x) is the inverse of
f(x)=y, then F(y)=x. Not all functions have inverses.

Special functions: Functions that have names. For example: sine, cosine and tangent. Functions like
f(x)=3x (three times x) are not called special functions. They can be elementary, non-elementary or
inverses.

HISTORY

n the 1690s Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli used the word function in letters between them
so the modern concept began at the same time as calculus.

In 1748 Leonhard Euler gave: "A function of a variable quantity is an analytic expression composed
in any way whatsoever of the variable quantity and numbers or constant quantities." and then in
1755: "If some quantities so depend on other quantities that if the latter are changed the former
undergoes change, then the former quantities are called functions of the latter. This definition applies
rather widely and includes all ways in which one quantity could be determined by other. If,
therefore, x denotes a variable quantity, then all quantities which depend upon x in any way, or are
determined by it, are called functions of x." which is very modern.

Usually, Dirichlet is credited with the version used in schools until the second half of the 20th
century: "y is a function of a variable x, defined on the interval a < x < b, if to every value of the
variable x in this interval there corresponds a definite value of the variable y. Also, it is irrelevant in
what way this correspondence is established."

In 1939, the Bourbaki generalized the Dirichlet definition and gave a set theoretic version of the
definition as a correspondence between inputs and outputs; this was used in schools from about
1960.