Series: Calculus: Other Indeterminate Forms

Thought the video was great

11/15/2010

~ Stephen22

Very helpful for me as I plunge forward in Calc 2. For some reason I was making a minor mistake differentiating the ln(f(x)) portion of this problem. Good to always make sure you are placing items correctly in the numerator or denominator. I was working on a similar problem that was the same except it was 3/x instead of 1/x. Of course the answer is still e! Thanks!

Below are the descriptions for each of the lessons included in the series:

• Calculus: L'Hopital's Rule, Indeterminate Products

  Some indeterminate forms, including indeterminate products, must be manipulated before L'Hôpital's Rule can be applied. In order to do this, try expressing one of the factors as a fraction (so you can recognize things like (0 * infinity) or (theta * cotangent of theta) as an indeterminate form given that they are actually indeterminate products rather than the easily recognizable 0/0 or infinity/infinity). Once recognized as an indeterminate form, you will learn how to manipulate these camouflaged indeterminate forms in such a way that they can have L'Hôpital's rule applied to them. In this lesson, you will learn how to recognize these limits with indeterminate forms as well as how to handle limits with negative exponents and limits with trigonometric expressions.

  Taught by Professor Edward Burger, this lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, College Algebra. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at http://www.thinkwell.com/student/product/calculus. The full course covers limits, derivatives, implicit differentiation, integration or antidifferentiation, L'Hôpital's Rule, functions and their inverses, improper integrals, integral calculus, differential calculus, sequences, series, differential equations, parametric equations, polar coordinates, vector calculus and a variety of other AP Calculus, College Calculus and Calculus II topics.

  Edward Burger, Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, having graduated summa cum laude with distinction in mathematics from Connecticut College.

  He has also taught at UT-Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he served as a fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada and at Macquarie University in Australia. Prof. Burger has won many awards, including the 2001 Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, the 2004 Chauvenet Prize, and the 2006 Lester R. Ford Award, all from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2006, Reader's Digest named him in the "100 Best of America".

  Prof. Burger is the author of over 50 articles, videos, and books, including the trade book, Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas and of the textbook The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking. He also speaks frequently to professional and public audiences, referees professional journals, and publishes articles in leading math journals, including The Journal of Number Theory and American Mathematical Monthly. His areas of specialty include number theory, Diophantine approximation, p-adic analysis, the geometry of numbers, and the theory of continued fractions.

  Prof. Burger's unique sense of humor and his teaching expertise combine to make him the ideal presenter of Thinkwell's entertaining and informative video lectures.

• Calculus:L'Hopital's Rule-Indeterminate Difference

  This lesson will show you how to recognize indeterminate forms that are camouflaged as indeterminate differences rather than showing up as 0/0 or infinity/infinity. For instance, when you calculate the limit to be equal to infinity - infinity (e.g. 1/x - 1/(e^x-1)), this is an indeterminate form, so you must manipulate it to make it into a form such that you can apply L'Hôpital's rule to it. This lesson also covers additional camouflaged indeterminate differences that show up with fractions and radicals. To apply L'Hôpital's rule to an indeterminate difference in many of these instances, you will first have to find a common denominator or look for a sneaky way to factor. Professor Burger will walk you through examples of all of these instances.

  Taught by Professor Edward Burger, this lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, College Algebra. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at http://www.thinkwell.com/student/product/calculus. The full course covers limits, derivatives, implicit differentiation, integration or antidifferentiation, L'Hôpital's Rule, functions and their inverses, improper integrals, integral calculus, differential calculus, sequences, series, differential equations, parametric equations, polar coordinates, vector calculus and a variety of other AP Calculus, College Calculus and Calculus II topics.

  Edward Burger, Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, having graduated summa cum laude with distinction in mathematics from Connecticut College.

  He has also taught at UT-Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he served as a fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada and at Macquarie University in Australia. Prof. Burger has won many awards, including the 2001 Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, the 2004 Chauvenet Prize, and the 2006 Lester R. Ford Award, all from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2006, Reader's Digest named him in the "100 Best of America".

  Prof. Burger is the author of over 50 articles, videos, and books, including the trade book, Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas and of the textbook The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking. He also speaks frequently to professional and public audiences, referees professional journals, and publishes articles in leading math journals, including The Journal of Number Theory and American Mathematical Monthly. His areas of specialty include number theory, Diophantine approximation, p-adic analysis, the geometry of numbers, and the theory of continued fractions.

  Prof. Burger's unique sense of humor and his teaching expertise combine to make him the ideal presenter of Thinkwell's entertaining and informative video lectures.

• Calculus: L'Hopital's Rule, 1 to an Infinite Power

  The limit of a function is called an indeterminate form when it produces a mathematically meaningless result. Some advanced indeterminate forms have to be manipulated before L'Hôpital's rule can be applied to them. In this lesson, you will learn several ways in which logarithmic functions in indeterminate forms can be camouflaged. In order to use L'Hôpital's rule on a camouflaged indeterminate form (e.g. 1^infinity or infinity * 0), you will need to apply logarithmic properties such that you can rewrite the exponential function as a logarithm and convert it into a standard indeterminate form. L'Hopital's rule is applicable to f(x) and g(x) if they are differentiable functions across an interval containing c, except possibly at c. If the limit as x approaches c of f(x)/g(x) produces the indeterminant form of 0/0 or (+-infinity)/(+-infinity), then the limit as x approaches c or f(x)/g(x) is equal to the limit as x approaches c of [the derivative of f(x)] / [the derivative of g(x)] provided the limit on the right exists or is infinite. L'Hôpital's rule can also be applied to one-sided limits and, as long as the limit is indeterminate, you can take the limit again if L'Hôpital's rule doesn't give you an answer the first time around (and you are again left with an indeterminate form as the limit)

  Taught by Professor Edward Burger, this lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, College Algebra. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at http://www.thinkwell.com/student/product/calculus. The full course covers limits, derivatives, implicit differentiation, integration or antidifferentiation, L'Hôpital's Rule, functions and their inverses, improper integrals, integral calculus, differential calculus, sequences, series, differential equations, parametric equations, polar coordinates, vector calculus and a variety of other AP Calculus, College Calculus and Calculus II topics.

  Edward Burger, Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, having graduated summa cum laude with distinction in mathematics from Connecticut College.

  He has also taught at UT-Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he served as a fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada and at Macquarie University in Australia. Prof. Burger has won many awards, including the 2001 Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, the 2004 Chauvenet Prize, and the 2006 Lester R. Ford Award, all from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2006, Reader's Digest named him in the "100 Best of America".

  Prof. Burger is the author of over 50 articles, videos, and books, including the trade book, Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas and of the textbook The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking. He also speaks frequently to professional and public audiences, referees professional journals, and publishes articles in leading math journals, including The Journal of Number Theory and American Mathematical Monthly. His areas of specialty include number theory, Diophantine approximation, p-adic analysis, the geometry of numbers, and the theory of continued fractions.

  Prof. Burger's unique sense of humor and his teaching expertise combine to make him the ideal presenter of Thinkwell's entertaining and informative video lectures.

• Calculus: Example of One to the Infinite Power

  Taught by Professor Edward Burger, this lesson comes from a comprehensive Calculus course. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at http://www.thinkwell.com/student/product/calculus. The full course covers limits, derivatives, implicit differentiation, integration or antidifferentiation, L'Hopital's Rule, functions and their inverses, improper integrals, integral calculus, differential calculus, sequences, series, differential equations, parametric equations, polar coordinates, vector calculus and a variety of other AP Calculus, College Calculus and Calculus II topics.

  Edward Burger, Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, having graduated summa cum laude with distinction in mathematics from Connecticut College.

  He has also taught at UT-Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he served as a fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada and at Macquarie University in Australia. Prof. Burger has won many awards, including the 2001 Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, the 2004 Chauvenet Prize, and the 2006 Lester R. Ford Award, all from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2006, Reader's Digest named him in the "100 Best of America".

  Prof. Burger is the author of over 50 articles, videos, and books, including the trade book, "Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas" and of the textbook "The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking". He also speaks frequently to professional and public audiences, referees professional journals, and publishes articles in leading math journals, including The "Journal of Number Theory" and "American Mathematical Monthly". His areas of specialty include number theory, Diophantine approximation, p-adic analysis, the geometry of numbers, and the theory of continued fractions.

  Prof. Burger's unique sense of humor and his teaching expertise combine to make him the ideal presenter of Thinkwell's entertaining and informative video lectures.

Supplementary Files:

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