Not A Number in IEEE Math

Harish P. Hiriyannaiah harish at ecebucolix.ncsu.edu
Thu Feb 22 09:27:55 AEST 1990


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# > As long as only very, VERY, large numbers (positive or negative) are
defined
# > to be NaNs (ie. not results of division by zero, and other silly
things), then
# > the above behaviour makes sense.
# > 
# > 
# > 		lim    __n__ = 1.0	and     lim   0.0 * n = 0.0
# > 	       n->inf    n		       n->inf
# > 
# > 	where inf is +/- infinity.


Sigh .....    I suppose you haven't had a basic course in limits of functions.
I thought any elementary course in Calculus will cover this topic.

The point is

inf/inf, 0/0, 0*inf, inf^0, 0^inf, inf-inf are all indeterminate. You have to
explicitly evaluate the limits in such cases. There are many ways of
doing this,
and one of  them is L' Hospital's rule.


harish pu. hi.				harish at ecebucolix.ncsu.edu



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