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GeezerVison is showing mathworld.wolfram.com — Limit -- from Wolfram MathWorld LimitA limit describes the value approached by a sequence or function.
A sequence
where
Limits in a metric space are unique. On the other hand, a sequence in a topological
space
The topological notion of convergence can be rewritten to accommodate a wider array of topological spaces
For a function The limit laws describe how finite limits behave under algebraic operations.
For a real-valued function
For a domain
or from above
If
The expression in (3) is read "the limit as
For a real function
where
For a function of two real variables, a limit must be independent of the path of approach. For
example, the function
for
In contrast, the function
Consequently, its limit at the origin does not exist. The relation
Limits are implemented in the Wolfram Language as Limit[f,
x-> x0]. This command also takes the option Direction,
which specifies the direction of approach and can be set to
Note that the function definition of limit can be thought of as a natural generalization of the sequence definition
due to the fact that a sequence
For a sequence
These values always exist in the affinely extended real numbers and may equal Related notions include supremum limit and infimum limit.
Indeterminate forms of types
For
so that
then calculating
The indeterminate form
All of the above notions can be generalized even further by utilizing the language of ultrafilters. In particular, if
The June 2, 1996 comic strip FoxTrot by Bill Amend (Amend 1998, p. 19; Mitchell 2006/2007) featured the following limit as a "hard" exam problem intended for a remedial math class but accidentally handed out to the normal class:
See alsoCentral Limit Theorem, Continuous, Convergent, Deleted Neighborhood, Derivative, Discontinuity, Indeterminate Form, Infimum Limit, L'Hospital's Rule, Limit Comparison Test, Limit Laws, Limit Test, Lower Limit, Squeeze Theorem, Supremum Limit, Upper Limit Explore this topic in the MathWorld classroomPortions of this entry contributed by Christopher Stover Explore with Wolfram|AlphaMore things to try: ReferencesAmend, B. Camp FoxTrot. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, p. 19, 1998. Strip reproduced with permission of the author.Clark, P. L. "Convergence." 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20170706035307/http://math.uga.edu/~pete/convergence.pdf.Courant, R. and Robbins, H. "Limits. Infinite Geometrical Series." §2.2.3 in What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods, 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, pp. 63-66, 1996.Gruntz, D. "On Computing Limits in a Symbolic Manipulation System." Doctoral thesis. Zürich, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 1996.Hight, D. W. A Concept of Limits. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1966.Hunter, J. K. An Introduction to Real Analysis. Davis, CA: University of California, 2014. https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~hunter/intro_analysis_pdf/intro_analysis.pdf.Kaplan, W. "Limits and Continuity." §2.4 in Advanced Calculus, 4th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 82-86, 1992.Miller, N. Limits: An Introductory Treatment. Waltham, MA: Blaisdell, 1964.Mitchell, C. W. Jr. In "Media Clips" (Ed. M. Cibes and J. Greenwood). Math. Teacher 100, 339, 2006/2007.Munkres, J. Topology 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2000.Nagy, G. "The Concept of Convergence: Ultrafilters and Nets." 2008. https://www.math.ksu.edu/about/personal/nagy/real-an/1-02-convergence.pdf.Prevost, S. "Exploring theReferenced on Wolfram|AlphaLimitCite this as:Weisstein, Eric W., with contributions by Christopher Stover. "Limit." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Limit.html Subject classifications | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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