MATH 1ZA3 Final: Division by zero

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Mathematics
• Course: MATH 1ZA3
• Professor: Aaron Childs

Document Summary

Division by 0 in limits: what to do with 0 (an addendum to chapter 2. 2 of stewart"s calculus) A typical example of an unfortunate division by 0: Let"s start examining the role of 0 limits in division by examining the limit: x lim x . Here, the 3+ means that we"re looking at x values as they approach from the right or from above . That is, values of x greater than 3. As always in trying to compute limits on rational functions, we"ll attempt to plug in the value x is approaching in place of the variable: x lim x . I"ve stepped outside the usual notation by putting the sign is in quotes, since clearly our result is nonsense. We hoped we would get a value, which would be limit, and equality would hold. But since it has failed, our method did not work, so it cannot possibly be equal.