# Functions, Graphs, and Limits

To Go

## Introduction to Functions, Graphs, And Limits - At A Glance:

Most of the time, it's more precise to find the limit using algebra.

When finding a limit of the form  , the first thing to do is plug a into the function to see if it exists. If f(a) exists, then that's the answer.

### Sample Problem

Find .

The first thing we do is plug in 3 and see if we find a value.

That's a perfectly good fraction, therefore

Here's an example of how we might not find a solution.

### Sample Problem

Find .

The first thing we do is plug in 0 and see if we find a number.

= ?

The fraction is undefined, since we can't divide by zero.

### Sample Problem

Find .

The first thing we do is see if we can plug in 2.

When we're asked to find the limit of a quotient, if we plug in a number and find   there's a good chance we can do something about it: we simplify the quotient and try again.

### Sample Problem

Find .

We already tried to plug in 2 and that didn't work. We'll simplify the fraction by factoring the polynomials.

x2-x-2 = (x + 1)(x-2)

and

x2-5x + 6 = (x-2)(x-3).

Now we can see why we got before: 2 is a root of the polynomial in the numerator, and also a root of the polynomial in the denominator. Here's the point where we can do something useful: cancel the term (x-2) from the numerator and denominator:

.

Finally, put in 2 again:

We can now say

= 2.

Why does this work? Let

The quotient f(x) can be factored as

which equals (x-1) for every value of x except -1 (when x = -1, the quotient is undefined).

We'll say that again, because it's important. After factoring f, we see that we can think of it as

.

If we graph this, we find the line x-1 with a "hole" in the graph at x = -1 since f(-1) is undefined:

It's like the function f(x) is trying to be x-1, but failing at one spot (poor function!). Here's the good news: since f(x) is trying to be x-1, we can find

.

#### Exercise 1

What function do we get if we simplify the quotient?

• \fracx2 + 6x + 8x2-x-20

#### Exercise 2

What function do we get if we simplify the quotient?

\item

\fracx3-9xx2-3x

#### Exercise 3

What function do we get if we simplify the quotient?

• \fracx + 6x2 + 4x-12

#### Exercise 4

Find the limits.

• \lim_x\to2\fracx-1x2-1

#### Exercise 5

• \lim_x\to1\fracx-1x2-1

#### Exercise 6

• \lim_x\to0\fracx3-xx3 + 6x2 + 9x

#### Exercise 7

• \lim_x\to2\fracx3-4xx2-9x + 14

#### Exercise 8

• \lim_x\to10\fracx2-100x2 + 6x-40