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There are three basic rules for evaluating limits at infinity for a rational function = () (where p and q are polynomials): If the degree of p is greater than the degree of q, then the limit is positive or negative infinity depending on the signs of the leading coefficients;
That is, the least upper bound (sup or supremum) of the empty set is negative infinity, while the greatest lower bound (inf or infimum) is positive infinity. By analogy with the above, in the domain of the extended reals, negative infinity is the identity element for the maximum and supremum operators, while positive infinity is the identity ...
In this usage, infinity is a mathematical concept, and infinite mathematical objects can be studied, manipulated, and used just like any other mathematical object. The mathematical concept of infinity refines and extends the old philosophical concept, in particular by introducing infinitely many different sizes of infinite sets.
In mathematical analysis, limit superior and limit inferior are important tools for studying sequences of real numbers.Since the supremum and infimum of an unbounded set of real numbers may not exist (the reals are not a complete lattice), it is convenient to consider sequences in the affinely extended real number system: we add the positive and negative infinities to the real line to give the ...
"The limit of a n as n approaches infinity equals L" or "The limit as n approaches infinity of a n equals L". The formal definition intuitively means that eventually, all elements of the sequence get arbitrarily close to the limit, since the absolute value | a n − L | is the distance between a n and L. Not every sequence has a limit.
The aleph numbers differ from the infinity (∞) commonly found in algebra and calculus, in that the alephs measure the sizes of sets, while infinity is commonly defined either as an extreme limit of the real number line (applied to a function or sequence that "diverges to infinity" or "increases without bound"), or as an extreme point of the ...
On the other hand, every real number greater than or equal to zero is certainly an upper bound on this set. Hence, is the least upper bound of the negative reals, so the supremum is 0. This set has a supremum but no greatest element. However, the definition of maximal and minimal elements is more general. In particular, a set can have many ...
This page was last edited on 20 June 2007, at 09:17 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may ...