Some of the most important problems of the calculus are those where time is the independent variable, and we have to think about the values of some other quantity that varies when the time varies. Some things grow larger as time goes on; some other things grow smaller. The distance that a train has got from its starting place goes on ever increasing as time goes on. Trees grow taller as the years go by. Which is growing at the greater rate; a plant inches high which in one month becomes inches high, or a tree feet high which in a year becomes feet high?
In this chapter we are going to make much use of the word rate. Nothing to do with poor-rate, or water-rate (except that even here the word suggests a proportion–a ratio–so many pence in the pound). Nothing to do even with birth-rate or death-rate, though these words suggest so many births or deaths per thousand of the population. When a motor-car whizzes by us, we say: What a terrific rate! When a spendthrift is flinging about his money, we remark that that young man is living at a prodigious rate.
