Monday, 23 September 2019

Finding a limit using High School methods



One of my students approached me with a question about a limit. (She doesn't know the idea of a limit.) I was able to find the limit quite easily by using L'Hopital's Rule. However, they don't know about L'Hopital's Rule, and so a proof cannot use it. The limit is as follows:



limxln2x+2lnxx=0



I must be missing a simple trick. The proof cannot use L'Hopital's Rule, nor can it be a formal εδ-proof. Neither of these ideas have been introduced in the course. We have done Taylor Series.



Can anyone see a simple way, of finding this limit?


Answer




Let x=eu. We are looking at u2+2ueu.



For the u2eu part, use the fact that for positive u, we have eu>u33!. (This comes from the Taylor series.)



The 2ueu part is done in the same way.


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