Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Limits

The whole concept of how limits worked took me a while to figure out mainly the part of discontinuity and continuity. I have trouble in trying to figure out whether a piecewise function is continuous or discontinuous.

One of the biggest problems I have is trying to figure out End behavior models for trigonometric functions without using a calculator for example problem number 38 on pg 95 which is f(x)=ln[abs(x)]+sinx. I was able to figure out the right end behavior model knowing that sinx was not really significant because the smallest value is -1 and that the biggest value is 1 so I knew that ln[abs(x)] was the right end behavior model.

I still have trouble in trying to figure out how to solve for horizontal asymptotes for a function. I am not sure whether there is a way to solve for it without having to graph it.

I was really confident about the limits test after seeing the practice test we got primarily because I did not see anything that gave me too much problem. After taking the test I was blindsided by a couple of problems on the test which is still bugging me that I was not able to solve which was one about explaining why a trigonometric function was continuous and to graph a sketch. The other one was the free response which had a piecewise function with a function having a variable on it.

1 comment:

  1. Did you figure out the left hand behavior model for number 38? Those absolute value signs for the ln become really significant for that because that means that ln|x| is significant for negative inputs as well.

    You don't have to graph to find horizontal asymptotes. In fact, finding the horiz. asymptote first should help you to graph.

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