Analysis: Finding limit with l'Hospital

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Homework Help Overview

The discussion revolves around finding the limit of a trigonometric expression as x approaches 0, specifically using l'Hospital's Rule and alternative methods to evaluate the limit of a tangent function involving sine.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Assumption checking, Mathematical reasoning

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • Participants discuss the use of l'Hospital's Rule, with one participant initially claiming to have used it twice, later correcting themselves to indicate it was only used once. Others suggest that l'Hospital's Rule may not be necessary for this problem and explore an alternative approach using known limits.

Discussion Status

The conversation is ongoing, with some participants providing guidance on alternative methods to evaluate the limit without l'Hospital's Rule. There is an acknowledgment of differing results from analytical and computational methods, indicating a productive exploration of the topic.

Contextual Notes

One participant mentions potential reliability issues with their calculator, which may affect their results. There is also a reference to the continuity of functions at the limiting point, which is relevant to the discussion of limit interchangeability.

Shackleford
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I'm not sure what I did with this expression is right.

I looked at the argument as x tends to 0. I used l'Hospital twice and found that the argument tends to pi/3. Of course, tan(pi/3) = sqrt3.

http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n149/camarolt4z28/Untitled-3.png
 
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How did you use l'Hospital twice? Your method is legal. The result is correct.

ehild
 
ehild said:
How did you use l'Hospital twice? Your method is legal. The result is correct.

ehild

Oops. You're right. I just used it once.

I plugged this into my TI-89 Ti, and it didn't agree with my analytical result. I suppose it's not very reliable as it didn't agree for a couple of other problems, too.
 
It's worth noting that you don't need to use L'Hopital's Rule at all for this problem.

\lim_{x \to 0^+}\tan\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x}{6x}\right)
=\tan (\lim_{x \to 0^+}\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x \cdot 2\pi x}{2\pi x \cdot 6x}\right))
=\tan (\lim_{x \to 0^+}\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x}{2\pi x} \cdot \frac{2\pi x}{6x}\right))
=\tan (\frac{\pi}{3}) = \sqrt{3}

I used a wellknown limit, \lim_{t \to 0} \frac{sin(t)}{t} = 1 and the fact that you can interchange the limit and function, provided the function is continuous at the limiting point.
 
Mark44 said:
It's worth noting that you don't need to use L'Hopital's Rule at all for this problem.

\lim_{x \to 0^+}\tan\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x}{6x}\right)
=\tan (\lim_{x \to 0^+}\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x \cdot 2\pi x}{2\pi x \cdot 6x}\right))
=\tan (\lim_{x \to 0^+}\left( \frac{sin 2\pi x}{2\pi x} \cdot \frac{2\pi x}{6x}\right))
=\tan (\frac{\pi}{3}) = \sqrt{3}

I used a wellknown limit, \lim_{t \to 0} \frac{sin(t)}{t} = 1 and the fact that you can interchange the limit and function, provided the function is continuous at the limiting point.

I like that method better. Ah. I didn't know that. I haven't read the section yet, but I'm sure it mentions being able to interchange the limit and function.
 

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