Sunday, February 28, 2016

calculus - Spot mistake in finding limlimitsxto1left(fracxx1frac1log(x)right)



This is the limit I'm trying to solve: lim




I thought: let's define x=k+1, so that k\to0 as x\to1.



Then it becomes:
\lim \limits_{k\to0}\left(\frac {k+1} {k} - \frac1 {\log(k+1)} \right)
and then,
\lim \limits_{k\to0}\left(\frac {k+1} {k} - \frac1 {\frac {\log(k+1)\times k}k} \right)=\lim \limits_{k\to0}\left(\frac {k+1} {k} - \frac1 {k} \right).
Which results in \frac k k , that should be 1, but wolfram says it's \frac 1 2...



Did I do something illegal?


Answer



Yes, the illegal part is this step:
\lim_{k \to 0}\frac1{\frac{\log(k + 1)}k}\frac1k = \lim_{k \to 0}\frac1k




I see that you applied the known limit
\lim_{t \to 0}\frac{\log(1 + t)}t = 1
but the fact is that
\lim_{x \to \alpha}f(x)g(x) = \lim_{x \to \alpha}f(x)\times\lim_{x \to \alpha}g(x)
is only valid when both limit are finite. In your case you're left with \lim\limits_{k \to 0}\frac1k, which not only is not finite, but does not exist entirely.






If you are looking for a way to evaluate your limit, I'd suggest MacLauring (that is, a Taylor expansion around x =0), which is the simplest and most elegant way. But since you said that you can't use Taylor yet, I fear your only possibility is going with L'Hospital.


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