Calculus (disambiguation)

Calculus (from Latin calculus meaning ‘pebble’, plural calculī) in its most general sense is any method or system of calculation.

Calculus may refer to:

Mathematics

• Infinitesimal calculus (or simply Calculus), which investigate motion and rates of change
  • Differential calculus
  • Integral calculus
  • Non-standard calculus, an approach to infinitesimal calculus using Robinson's infinitesimals
• Calculus of sums and differences (difference operator), also called the finite-difference calculus, a discrete analogue of "calculus"
• Functional calculus, a way to apply various types of functions to operators
• Schubert calculus, a branch of algebraic geometry
• Tensor calculus (also called tensor analysis), a generalization of vector calculus that encompasses tensor fields
  • Vector calculus (also called vector analysis), comprising specialized notations for multivariable analysis of vectors in an inner-product space
  • Matrix calculus, a specialized notation for multivariable calculus over spaces of matrices
• Numerical calculus (also called numerical analysis), the study of numerical approximations
• Umbral calculus, the combinatorics of certain operations on polynomials
• The calculus of variations, a field of study that deals with extremizing functionals

Logic

• Logical calculus, a formal system that defines a language and rules to derive an expression from premises
  • Propositional calculus, specifies the rules of inference governing the logic of propositions
  • Predicate calculus, specifies the rules of inference governing the logic of predicates
  • Proof calculus, a framework for expressing systems of logical inference
    • Sequent calculus, a proof calculus for first-order logic
    • Cirquent calculus, a proof calculus based on graph-style structures called cirquents
  • Situation calculus, a framework for describing relations within a dynamic system
    • Event calculus, a model for reasoning about events and their effects
    • Fluent calculus, a model for describing relations within a dynamic system
• Calculus of relations, the manipulation of binary relations with the algebra of sets, composition of relations, and transpose relations
• Epsilon calculus, a logical language which replaces quantifiers with the epsilon operator
• Fitch-style calculus, a method for constructing formal proofs used in first-order logic
• Modal μ-calculus, a common temporal logic used by formal verification methods such as model checking

Physics

• Bondi k-calculus, a method used in relativity theory
• Jones calculus, used in optics to describe polarized light
• Mueller calculus, used in optics to handle Stokes vectors, which describe the polarization of incoherent light
• Operational calculus, used to solve differential equations arising in electronics

Formal language

• Lambda calculus, a formulation of the theory of reflexive functions that has deep connections to computational theory
  • Kappa calculus, a reformulation of the first-order fragment of typed lambda calculus
  • Rho calculus, introduced as a general means to uniformly integrate rewriting into lambda calculus
• Process calculus, a set of approaches to formulating formal models of concurrent systems
  • Ambient calculus, a family of models for concurrent systems based on the concept of agent mobility
  • Join calculus, a theoretical model for the design of distributed programming languages
  • π-calculus, a formulation of the theory of concurrent, communicating processes
• Relational calculus, a calculus for the relational data model
  • Domain relational calculus
  • Tuple calculus
• Refinement calculus, a way of refining models of programs into efficient programs

Other meanings

• Calculus (dental), deposits of calcium phosphate salts on teeth, also known as tartar
• Calculus (medicine), a stone formed in the body such as a gall stone or kidney stone
• Battlefield calculus, military calculation of all known factors into the decision-making and action-planning process
• Calculus (spider), a genus of the family Oonopidae
• Caseolus calculus, a genus and species of small land snails
• Professor Calculus, a fictional character in the comic-strip series The Adventures of Tintin
• Calculus of negligence, a legal standard in U.S. tort law to determine if a duty of care has been breached
• Felicific calculus, a procedure to evaluate the benefit of an action, according to Bentham