Why are we treating du/dx as a fraction?

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When I was learning implicit differentiation in my class I was told to not think of $dy/dx$ as a fraction. Now I am doing integration by $u$-substitution and we treat $du/dx$ as a fraction and solve for $dx$. Why is this?

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In the 19th century mathematicians became extremely squeamish about anything that is not logically rigorous, and they toss around the word "intuitive" promiscuously without noticing that that term admits a variety of different meanings to refer to non-rigorous things.

In many contexts, thinking of $dx$ as an infinitely small increment of $x$ and $dy$ as the corresponding infinitely small increment of $y$ is very useful.

Some instances of treating $dy/dx$ as if it were just an ordinary fraction can be justified by the chain rule, and among those are the things done in $u$ substitution.