In this article on his ‘Azimuth’ website, John Baez considers the fact that for any three related variables
After giving an argument for the case where
First, the linear argument can easily be expressed more symmetrically in a way that generalizes the identity to any number of variables as follows:
Let the relation be
And of course any second year calculus student should know that the linear argument can be applied locally to the case of any smooth relationship function
So the intuition for where the minus signs come from is just the act of “moving variables to the other side of the equation”. And if the idea of partial differentials is to have any meaning then the place to start worrying about those minus signs is not in the general cyclical identity but in the simple two variable case of implicit differentiation where
I need to think some more about this – in particular how the minus signs from implicit diff in “my” argument (or from solving linear equations in the Baez linearization) relate to those from reversing wedge products in the Jacobs argument. (But looking at Jacobs’ X-post there is a reference to an article by Peter Joot on solving equations by use of wedge product which probably makes it all clear.)
Source: The Cyclic Identity for Partial Derivatives | Azimuth