calculus - What is wrong with treating $dfrac {dy}{dx}$ as a fraction?

If you think about the limit definition of the derivative, $dy$ represents $$\lim_{h\rightarrow 0}\dfrac {f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$$, and $dx$ represents

$$\lim_{h\rightarrow 0}$$
. So you have a $\;\;$$\dfrac {number}{another\; number}=a fraction$, so why can't you treat it as one? Thanks! (by the way if possible please keep the answers at a calc AB level)

Answer

The derivative, when it exists, is a real number (I'm restricting here to real values functions only for simplicity). Not every real number is a fraction (i.e., $\pi$ is not a fraction), but every real number is trivially a quotient of two real numbers (namely, $x=\frac{x}{1}$). So, in which sense is the derivative a fraction? answer: it's not. And now, in which sense is the derivative a quotient to two numbers? Ahhh, let's try to answer that then: By definition $f'(x)=\lim_{h\to 0}\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$. Well, that is not a quotient of two numbers, but rather it is a limit. A limit, when it exists, is a number. This particular limit is a limit of quotients of a particular form (still, not of fractions in general, but quotients of real numbers).

The meaning of the derivative $f'(x)$ is the instantaneous rate of change of the value of $f$ at the point $x$. It is defined as a certain limit. If you now intuitively think of $h$ as an infinitesimal number (warning: infinitesimals do not exist in $\mathbb R$, but they exist in certain extensions of the reals) then you can consider the single expression $\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$. In systems where infinitesimals really do exist one can show that this single expression, when the derivative exists, is actually infinitesimally close to the actural derivative $f'(x)$. That is, when $h\ne 0$ is infinitesimal, $f'(x)-\frac{f(x+h)-f(x)}{h}$ is itself infinitesimal. One can them compute with this expression as if it were the derivative (with some care). This can be done informally, and to some extend this is how the creators of early calculus (prior to Cauchy) argued, or it can be done rigorously using any one of a number of different techniques to introduce infinitesimals into calculus. However, getting infinitesimals into the picture comes with a price. There are logical/set-theoretical issues with such models rendering all of them not very explicit.