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Limit

The document defines the limit of a function and provides an example to illustrate it. It explains that for any number close to the limit value, there exists some number such that the function values are closer to the limit than the chosen number. It then works through an example limit proof to demonstrate how to apply the definition.

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9 views

Limit

The document defines the limit of a function and provides an example to illustrate it. It explains that for any number close to the limit value, there exists some number such that the function values are closer to the limit than the chosen number. It then works through an example limit proof to demonstrate how to apply the definition.

Uploaded by

shahinaaslam938
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Definition 1 Let f(x) be a function defined on an interval that contains except

possibly at Then we say that,

if for every number there is some number such that

Wow. That’s a mouth full. Now that it’s written down, just what does this mean?

Let’s take a look at the following graph and let’s also assume that the limit does exist.

What the definition is telling us is that for any number that we pick we can go to
our graph and sketch two horizontal lines at and as shown on the graph
above. Then somewhere out there in the world is another number , which we will
need to determine, that will allow us to add in two vertical lines to our graph at
and .

Now, if we take any x in the pink region, i.e. between and , then this x will be
closer to a than either of and . Or,

If we now identify the point on the graph that our choice of x gives then this point on the
graph will lie in the intersection of the pink and yellow region. This means that this
function value f(x) will be closer to L than either of and . Or,

So, if we take any value of x in the pink region then the graph for those values of x will
lie in the yellow region.
Notice that there are actually an infinite number of possible δ’s that we can choose. In
fact, if we go back and look at the graph above it looks like we could have taken a
slightly larger δ and still gotten the graph from that pink region to be completely
contained in the yellow region.

Also, notice that as the definition points out we only need to make sure that the function
is defined in some interval around but we don’t really care if it is defined at .
Remember that limits do not care what is happening at the point, they only care what is
happening around the point in question.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten the definition out of the way and made an attempt to
understand it let’s see how it’s actually used in practice.

These are a little tricky sometimes and it can take a lot of practice to get good at these so
don’t feel too bad if you don’t pick up on this stuff right away. We’re going to be
looking at a couple of examples that work out fairly easily.

Example 1 Use the definition of the limit to prove the following limit.

Solution
In this case both L and a are zero. So, let be any number. Don’t worry about
what the number is, is just some arbitrary number. Now according to the definition
of the limit, if this limit is to be true we will need to find some other number so
that the following will be true.

Or upon simplifying things we need,

Often the way to go through these is to start with the left inequality and do a little
simplification and see if that suggests a choice for . We’ll start by bringing the
exponent out of the absolute value bars and then taking the square root of both sides.

Now, the results of this simplification looks an awful lot like with the
exception of the “ ” part. Missing that however isn’t a problem, it is just telling us
that we can’t take . So, it looks like if we choose we should get what we
want.
We’ll next need to verify that our choice of will give us what we want, i.e.,

Verification is in fact pretty much the same work that we did to get our guess. First,
let’s again let be any number and then choose . Now, assume

that . We need to show that by choosing x to satisfy this we will get,

To start the verification process we’ll start with and then first strip out the exponent
from the absolute values. Once this is done we’ll use our assumption on x, namely

that . Doing all this gives,

Or, upon taking the middle terms out, if we assume that then we will get,

and this is exactly what we needed to show.

So, just what have we done? We’ve shown that if we choose then we can find
a so that we have,

and according to our definition this means that,

These can be a little tricky the first couple times through. Especially when it seems like
we’ve got to do the work twice. In the previous example we did some simplification on
the left hand inequality to get our guess for and then seemingly went through exactly
the same work to then prove that our guess was correct. This is often how these work,
although we will see an example here in a bit where things don’t work out quite so nicely.

So, having said that let’s take a look at a slightly more complicated limit, although this
one will still be fairly similar to the first example.

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