Business Calculus is traditional calculus applied to business scenarios and situations. Calculus is one of the most useful mathetmatical techniques that generally calculate change. Calculus can generally be divided into differential and integral calculus both with their own specific applications. An important application to differential calculus is in optimization. Often times patterns of behaviour and relationships between various variables are described by continuous functions and in order to optimize (such as for a maximum or minimum) one needs to use differential calculus. Differential calculus uses derivatives to find the changes in an graph via the derivative function. When applied to business, it can be used to make calculations to determine optimal prices or optimal cost structures to maximize profits. Integral calculus, sometimes called the antiderivative, is often used in more complicated calculations. It can be visualized as the sum of the area underneath a particular curve.
Here is an example of a business calculus question:
A company sells computers for $1,650 each. The cost function for the production of computers is: C(x) = 5000 + 50x + 4x²
How many computers should the company produce assuming all produced computers are sold?
Hint: This problem involves optimizing the profit function to a maximum by using derivatives.
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