> For instance, you might ask “how do you derive the formula for the area
> of a circle?”.  If you flip the question around, you could ask “what is
> the derivation of the formula for the area of a circle?”.  Here’s an
> example titled “Area of a circle - derivation” [1].  I also see people
> on popular forums asking things like “can anyone show me the derivation
> of this formula for the radius of electron from nucleus?”.
>
> Similarly, I might have “/gnu/store/…-hello” and ask “what were the
> steps used to produce this?” or, equivalently, “can anyone show me the
> derivation of this?”.  At this point Guix comes to the rescue and says
> “/gnu/store/…-hello.drv”!

Now that you put it so explicitly, Guix's notion of derivation does seem
to come from the mathematical notion of derivation. Perhaps an explicit
analogy like you provided should be in the manual to clarify the
etymology.