gradient -
a graded change in the magnitude of some physical quantity or dimension
change the action of changing something; "the change of government had no impact on the economy"; "his change on abortion cost him the election"
concentration gradient a gradient in concentration of a solute as a function of distance through a solution; "the movement of a solute down its concentration gradient is called diffusion"
gravity gradient a gradient in the gravitational forces acting on different parts of a nonspherical object; "the gravity gradient of the moon causes the ocean tides on Earth"
gradient -
Of a function y = fx or the graph of such a function, the rate of change of y with respect to x, that is, the amount by which y changes for a certain often unit change in x.
gradient -
A vector operator that maps each value of a scalar field to a vector equal to the greatest rate of change of the scalar. Notation for a scalar field φ: \nablaφ.
Wikipedia
The gradient of a scalar field is a vector field which points in the direction of the greatest rate of increase of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change. A generalization of the gradient for functions on a Euclidean space which have values in another Euclidean space is the Jacobian. A further generalization for a function from one Banach space to another is the Fréchet derivative.
