527
Not that limit (thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] JustAPenguin@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

I have a BA in Mathematics. The limit is indeed determined by the direction you approach the limiting value.

When given without specification, the limit is implied to come from the left, meaning it increases towards the limiting value, which is why you see +inf.

[-] rooroo@feddit.org 15 points 3 days ago

Yeah but then it should be negative infinite, cause if x<8 the fraction is negative.

[-] JustAPenguin@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Ah, I misread the - as a +. You're correct! Sorry, I just woke up and am in the middle of my morning doomscrolling sesh

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 5 points 3 days ago

Conveniently modeled with the same limit.

Though I'm not sure what negative doom is and what happens when it approaches infinity.

[-] carmo55@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This is just not true. The normal limit we have here means a limit would have to exist from both directions and they should be equal. They're not, so the limit doesn't exist.

One-sided limits would be denoted by x -> 5– and x -> 5+ or similar.

PS: in complex analysis, there is no distinction between +infty and -infty, so there it would be correct to say the function has limit infty at 5.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago

In my experience with maths, there's a whole bunch of different conventions all over the place, so it might've genuinely been how they were taught, even if you were taught differently...

[-] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah, that's my experience too. When we did this in school we always defined from which side we were approaching the function.

[-] JustAPenguin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

You're right. But in this case, which is the case I was referring to, there is no two sided limit. It is discontinuous. It is in this case which I was referring to. Sorry for not being clear.

this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
527 points (95.4% liked)

Science Memes

19027 readers
135 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS