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The gradient is a fancy word for derivative, or the rate of change of a function. Itâs a vector (a direction to move) that. 1  Points in the direction of greatest increase of a function (intuition on why)  Is zero at a local maximum or local minimum (because there is no single direction of increase)
The gradient is a vector operation which operates on a scalar function to produce a vector whose magnitude is the maximum rate of change of the function at the point of the gradient and which is pointed in the direction of that maximum rate of change. In rectangular coordinates the gradient of function f(x,y,z) is: