Gradient (disambiguation)

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Gradient in vector calculus is a vector field representing the maximum rate of increase of a scalar field or a multivariate function and the direction of this maximal rate.

Gradient may also refer to:

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Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gradient</span> Multivariate derivative (mathematics)

In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field whose value at a point gives the direction and the rate of fastest increase. The gradient transforms like a vector under change of basis of the space of variables of . If the gradient of a function is non-zero at a point , the direction of the gradient is the direction in which the function increases most quickly from , and the magnitude of the gradient is the rate of increase in that direction, the greatest absolute directional derivative. Further, a point where the gradient is the zero vector is known as a stationary point. The gradient thus plays a fundamental role in optimization theory, where it is used to maximize a function by gradient ascent. In coordinate-free terms, the gradient of a function may be defined by:

Pitch may refer to:

Component may refer to:

Grade most commonly refers to:

Vector most often refers to:

Field may refer to:

A Newtonian fluid is a fluid in which the viscous stresses arising from its flow are at every point linearly correlated to the local strain rate — the rate of change of its deformation over time. Stresses are proportional to the rate of change of the fluid's velocity vector.

Texture may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thalweg</span> Line of lowest elevation in a watercourse or valley

In geography, hydrography, and fluvial geomorphology, a thalweg or talweg is the line or curve of lowest elevation within a valley or watercourse. Normally only the horizontal position of the curve is considered ; the corresponding vertical position is called the stream profile.

A temperature gradient is a physical quantity that describes in which direction and at what rate the temperature changes the most rapidly around a particular location. The temperature spatial gradient is a vector quantity with dimension of temperature difference per unit length. The SI unit is kelvin per meter (K/m).

Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability, in a wide variety of fields from physics to the social sciences.

Curl or CURL may refer to:

Geomorphometry, or geomorphometrics, is the science and practice of measuring the characteristics of terrain, the shape of the surface of the Earth, and the effects of this surface form on human and natural geography. It gathers various mathematical, statistical and image processing techniques that can be used to quantify morphological, hydrological, ecological and other aspects of a land surface. Common synonyms for geomorphometry are geomorphological analysis, terrain morphometry, terrain analysis, and land surface analysis. Geomorphometrics is the discipline based on the computational measures of the geometry, topography and shape of the Earth's horizons, and their temporal change. This is a major component of geographic information systems (GIS) and other software tools for spatial analysis.

The mathematics of general relativity is complex. In Newton's theories of motion, an object's length and the rate at which time passes remain constant while the object accelerates, meaning that many problems in Newtonian mechanics may be solved by algebra alone. In relativity, however, an object's length and the rate at which time passes both change appreciably as the object's speed approaches the speed of light, meaning that more variables and more complicated mathematics are required to calculate the object's motion. As a result, relativity requires the use of concepts such as vectors, tensors, pseudotensors and curvilinear coordinates.

In vector calculus, the surface gradient is a vector differential operator that is similar to the conventional gradient. The distinction is that the surface gradient takes effect along a surface.

The histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) is a feature descriptor used in computer vision and image processing for the purpose of object detection. The technique counts occurrences of gradient orientation in localized portions of an image. This method is similar to that of edge orientation histograms, scale-invariant feature transform descriptors, and shape contexts, but differs in that it is computed on a dense grid of uniformly spaced cells and uses overlapping local contrast normalization for improved accuracy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Velocity</span> Speed and direction of a motion

Velocity is the speed in combination with the direction of motion of an object. Velocity is a fundamental concept in kinematics, the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies.

In mathematics and physics, vector is a term that refers colloquially to some quantities that cannot be expressed by a single number, or to elements of some vector spaces.

A spatial gradient is a gradient whose components are spatial derivatives, i.e., rate of change of a given scalar physical quantity with respect to the position coordinates in physical space. Homogeneous regions have spatial gradient vector norm equal to zero. When evaluated over vertical position, it is called vertical derivative or vertical gradient; the remainder is called horizontal gradient component, the vector projection of the full gradient onto the horizontal plane.