Repeated differentiation is linear

From Calculus

This article is about a differentiation rule, i.e., a rule for differentiating a function expressed in terms of other functions whose derivatives are known.
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Statement

For a positive integer, denote by the function obtained by differentiating a total of times. The operation is a linear operator. We give two equivalent ways of stating this below.

In terms of additivity and pulling out scalars

The following are true:

  • Repeated differentiation is additive, or derivative of sum is sum of derivatives: If and are functions that are both differentiable at , we have:

or equivalently:

In point-free notation:

  • Constants (also called scalars) can be pulled out of differentiations: If is differentiable at and is a real number, then:

In terms of generalized linearity

Suppose are functions that are all differentiable at a point and are real numbers. Then:

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