I'm not teaching calculus right now, but I talk to someone who does, and the question that came up is why emphasize the $h \to 0$ definition of a derivative to calculus students?


Something a teacher might do is ask students to calculate the derivative of a function like $3x^2$ using this definition on an exam, but it makes me wonder what the point of doing something like that is. Once one sees the definition and learns the basic rules, you can basically calculate the derivative of a lot of reasonable functions quickly. I tried to turn that around and ask myself if there are good examples of a function (that calculus students would understand) where there isn't already a well-established rule for taking the derivative. The best I could come up with is a piecewise defined function, but that's no good at all.


More practically, this question came up because when trying to get students to do this, they seemed rather impatient (and maybe angry?) at why they couldn't use the "shortcut" (that they learned from friends or whatever). 


So here's an actual question:


What benefit is there in emphasizing (or even introducing) to calculus students the $h \to 0$ definition of a derivative (presuming there is a better way to do this?) and secondly, does anyone out there actually use this definition to calculate a derivative that couldn't be obtained by a known symbolic rule? I'd prefer a function whose definition could be understood by a student studying first-year calculus. 


I'm not trying to say that this is bad (or good), I just couldn't come up with any good reasons one way or the other myself.


**EDIT**: I appreciate all of the responses, but I think my question as posed is too vague. I was worried about being too specific, so let me just tell you the context and apologize for misleading the discussion. This is about teaching first-semester calculus to students straight out of high school in the US, most of whom have already taken a calculus course in high school (and didn't do well or retake it for whatever reason). These are mostly students who have no interest in mathematics (the cause for this is a different discussion I guess) and usually are only taking calculus to fulfill some university requirement. So their view of the instructor trying to get them to learn how to calculate derivatives from the definition on an assignment or on an exam is that they are just making them learn some long, arbitrary way of something that they already have better tools for. 


I apologize but I don't really accept the answer of "we teach the limit definition because we need a definition and that's how we do mathematics". I know I am being unfair in my paraphrasing, and I am NOT trying to say that we should not teach definitions. I was trying to understand how one answers the students' common question: "Why can't we just do this the easy way?" (and this was an overwhelming response on a recent mini-evaluation given to them). I like the answer of $\exp(-1/x^2)$ for the purpose of this question though. 


It's hard to get students to take you seriously when they think that you're only interested in making them jump through hoops. As a more extreme example, I recall that as an undergraduate, some of my friends who took first year calculus (depending on the instructor) were given an oral exam at the end of the semester in which they would have to give a proof of one of 10 preselected theorems from the class. This seemed completely pointless to me and would only further isolate students from being interested in math, so why are things like this done?


Anyway, sorry for wasting a lot of your time with my poorly-phrased question. I know MathOverflow is not a place for discussions, and I don't want this to degenerate into one, so sorry again and I'll accept an answer (though there were many good ones addressing different points).



Why do we teach calculus students the derivative as a limit?
This is a good question, given the way calculus is currently taught, which for me says more about the sad state of math education, rather than the material itself. All calculus textbooks and teachers claim that they are trying to teach what calculus is and how to use it. However, in the end most exams test mostly for the students' ability to turn a word problem into a formula and find the symbolic derivative for that formula. So it is not surprising that virtually all students and not a few teachers believe that calculus means symbolic differentiation and integration.


My view is almost exactly the opposite. I would like to see symbolic manipulation banished from, say, the first semester of calculus. Instead, I would like to see the first semester focused purely on what the derivative and definite integral (*not* the indefinite integral) are and what they are useful for. If you're not sure how this is possible without all the rules of differentiation and antidifferentiation, I suggest you take a look at the infamous "Harvard Calculus" textbook by Hughes-Hallett et al. This for me and despite all the furor it created is by far the best modern calculus textbook out there, because it actually tries to teach students calculus as a useful tool rather than a set of mysterious rules that miraculously solve a canned set of problems.


I also dislike introducing the definition of a derivative using standard mathematical terminology such as "limit" and notation such as $h\rightarrow 0$. Another achievement of the Harvard Calculus book was to write a math textbook in plain English. Of course, this led to severe criticism that it was too "warm and fuzzy", but I totally disagree.


Perhaps the most important insight that the Harvard Calculus team had was that the key reason students don't understand calculus is because they don't really know what a function is. Most students believe a function is a formula and nothing more. I now tell my students to forget everything they were ever told about functions and tell them just to remember that a function is a box, where if you feed it an input (in calculus it will be a single number), it will spit out an output (in calculus it will be a single number).


Finally, (I could write on this topic for a long time. If for some reason you want to read me, just google my name with "calculus") I dislike the word "derivative", which provides no hint of what a derivative is. My suggested replacement name is "sensitivity". The derivative measures the sensitivity of a function. In particular, it measures how sensitive the output is to small changes in the input. It is given by the ratio, where the denominator is the change in the input and the numerator is the induced change in the output. With this definition, it is not hard to show students why knowing the derivative can be very useful in many different contexts.


Defining the definite integral is even easier. With these definitions, explaining what the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is and why you need it is also easy.


Only after I have made sure that students really understand what functions, derivatives, and definite integrals are would I broach the subject of symbolic computation. What everybody should try to remember is that symbolic computation is only one and not necessarily the most important tool in the discipline of calculus, which itself is also merely a useful mathematical tool.


ADDED: What I think most mathematicians overlook is how large a conceptual leap it is to start studying functions (which is really a process) as mathematical objects, rather than just numbers. Until you give this its due respect and take the time to guide your students carefully through this conceptual leap, your students will never really appreciate how powerful calculus really is.


ADDED: I see that the function $\theta\mapsto \sin\theta$ is being mentioned. I would like to point out a simple question that very few calculus students and even teachers can answer correctly: Is the derivative of the sine function, where the angle is measured in degrees, the same as the derivative of the sine function, where the angle is measured in radians. In my department we audition all candidates for teaching calculus and often ask this question. So many people, including some with Ph.D.'s from good schools, couldn't answer this properly that I even tried it on a few really famous mathematicians. Again, the difficulty we all have with this question is for me a sign of how badly we ourselves learn calculus. Note, however, that if you use the definitions of function and derivative I give above, the answer is rather easy.


