Maxima and minima

lastmod 2018-08-17created 2015-12-291 edits

A local extremum of a function is a value of the function at a particular point that is the largest or smallest when compared with all other function values around that point. When the function value is the largest it is called a local maximum, and when it is the smallest, a local minimum.

Optimization problems deal with finding the local extrema or the maximum/minimum values of a function.

See also

• Gradient descent

Favorite site

• Wikipedia (en) article on maxima and minima