Limits describe what one quantity approaches as some other quantity approaches a given value. This concept is the basis of calculus because it is used to define both derivatives and integrals. In this lesson, we'll try to wrap our minds around what the notion of a limit is and use it to define the derivative function.

In previous lessons, we learned how the derivative \(f'(x)\) gives us the steepness at each point along a function \(f(x)\). In this lesson, we'll discuss how using the concept of a partial derivative we can find the steepness at each point along a surface \(z=f(x,y)\). To find the partial derivative we treat one of the variables as a constant and then take the ordinary derivative of \(f(x,y)\). Using this concept, we can specify how steep a surface \(f(x,y)\) is along the \(x\) direction and along the \(y\) direction at each point along the surface. In other words, for every point along the surface, there is a steepness of the surface associated with both the \(x\) and the \(y\) directions at that point.