Higher-dimensional, higher-order derivatives, functionally
The post Beautiful differentiation showed some lovely code that makes it easy to compute not just the values of user-written functions, but also all of its derivatives (infinitely many). This elegant technique is limited, however, to functions over a scalar (one-dimensional) domain. Next, we explored what it means to transcend that limitation, asking and answering the question What is a derivative, really? The answer to that question is that derivative values are linear maps saying how small input changes result in output changes. This answer allows us to unify several different notions of derivatives and their corresponding chain rules into a single simple and powerful form.
This third post combines the ideas from the two previous posts, to easily compute infinitely many derivatives of functions over arbitrary-dimensional domains.
The code shown here is part of a new Haskell library, which you can download and play with or peruse on the web.
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