Corollary 4. The derivative (g o f)'(x) of the composition of differentiable
real-valued functions equals the product g
f
(f(x)) • f'(x) of the derivatives of
these functions computed at the corresponding points.
There is a strong temptation to give a short proof of this last statement
in Leibniz' notation for the derivative, in which if z = z(y) and y = y(x), we
have
dz dz dy
dx dy dx
198 5 Differential Calculus
which appears to be completely natural, if one regards the symbol ^ or ^
not as a unit, but as the ratio of dz to dy or dy to dx.
The idea for a proof that thereby arises is to consider the difference quotient
Az _ Az Ay
Ax Ay Ax
and then pass to the limit as Ax -» 0. The difficulty that arises here (which
we also have had to deal with in part!) is that Ay may be 0 even if Ax ^ 0.