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  • - [Voiceover] So we're told that f of x

  • is equal to x over one minus cosine of x minus two,

  • and they ask us to select the correct description

  • of the one-sided limits of f at x equals two.

  • And we see that right at x equals two,

  • if we try to evaluate f of two,

  • we get two over one minus cosine

  • of two minus two,

  • which is the same thing as cosine of zero,

  • and cosine of zero is just one,

  • and so one minus one is zero,

  • and so the function is not defined at x equals two,

  • and that's why it might be interesting to find the limit

  • as x approaches two, and especially the one-sided limit.

  • And the one-sided limit.

  • Well, we'll obviously leave it at that

  • so let's try to approach this.

  • So there's actually a couple of ways you could do it.

  • There is one way you could do this without a calculator

  • by just inspecting what's going on here,

  • and thinking about the properties of the cosine function,

  • and if that inspires you, pause the video and work it out,

  • and I will do that at the end of this video.

  • The other way, if you have a calculator

  • is to do it with a little bit of a table

  • like we've done in other example problems.

  • So if we think about x approaching two

  • from the positive direction, well then.

  • We can make a little table here

  • where you have x, and then you have f of x.

  • And so for approaching two from values greater than two,

  • you could have 2.1,

  • 2.01.

  • Now the reason why I said calculators,

  • these aren't trivial to evaluate

  • because this would be what, 2.1

  • over 1 minus cosine of,

  • 2.1 minus two is 0.1.

  • I do not know what cosine of 0.1 is without a calculator.

  • I do know that cosine of zero is one

  • so this is very, very close to one without getting to one,

  • and it's going to be less than one.

  • Cosine is never going to be greater than one.

  • The cosine function is bounded between negative one

  • is less than cosine of x.

  • I'll just write the x, then I don't need the parenthesis.

  • Which is less than one.

  • The cosine function just oscillates between these two values

  • so this, this thing is gonna be approaching one

  • but it's going to be less than one.

  • It definitely cannot be greater than one,

  • and that's actually a good hint

  • for how you can just explore the structure here,

  • and then you could say, "All right, 2.01.

  • "Well, that's going to be 2.01

  • "over one minus

  • "cosine of 0.01."

  • And this is going to even closer to one

  • without being one but it's going to be less than one.

  • No matter what, cosine of anything

  • is going to be between negative one and one,

  • and it could even be including those things

  • but as we approach two,

  • this thing is going to approach one,

  • I guess you could say approach one from below.

  • And so you can start to make some intuitions here.

  • If it's approaching from below, this thing over here,

  • this whole expression is going to be positive,

  • and as we approach x equals two.

  • Well, the numerator is positive.

  • It's approaching two.

  • The denominator is positive so this whole thing

  • has to be approaching a positive value

  • or it could become unbounded

  • in the positive direction as we'll see,

  • this is unbounded because this thing

  • is even closer to one than this thing,

  • and you would see that if you have a calculator

  • but needless to say, this is going to be unbounded

  • in the positive direction so we're going to be going

  • towards positive infinity so these two choices have that,

  • and we can make the exact same argument as we approach x

  • in the negative or from below,

  • as we approach two from below, I should say.

  • So that's x, and that is f of x,

  • and once again, I don't have a calculator in front of me.

  • You could evaluate these things at a calculator,

  • and become very clear that these are positive,

  • and as we get closer to,

  • they become even larger and larger positive values,

  • and the same thing would happen if you did 1.9,

  • and if you did 1.99

  • because here, you'd be 1.9 over one minus cosine.

  • Now here, you'd have 1.9 minus two

  • so this would be negative 0.1.

  • Let me scroll over a little bit.

  • The second one would be 1.99

  • over one minus cosine

  • of negative 0.01.

  • And cosine of negative 0.1

  • is the same thing as cosine of 0.1.

  • Cosine of negative 0.01

  • is the same thing as cosine of 0.01.

  • So these two things, this is going to be equal to that.

  • That is going to be equal to that.

  • And once again, we're gonna be approaching positive infinity

  • so the only choice where all of that is true

  • is this first one.

  • Whether we approach two from the right-hand side

  • or the left-hand side, we're approaching positive infinity

  • but the other way you could have deduced that is say,

  • "Okay, as we approach two,

  • the numerator is going to be positive

  • 'cause two is positive, and then over here,

  • as we approach two,

  • cosine of anything can never be greater than one.

  • It's going to approach one but be less than one

  • so if this is less than as x approaches two.

  • It becomes one when x is equal to two.

  • Well then, this right over here,

  • one minus something less than one is going to be positive

  • so you have a positive divided by a positive

  • so you're definitely going to get positive values

  • as you approach two.

  • And we know, and they've already told us

  • that these are going to be unbounded based on the choices

  • so you would also pick that

  • but you should also feel good about it,

  • that the closer that we get to two,

  • the closer that this value right over here gets to zero.

  • And the closer that this value gets to zero,

  • the closer we get to one.

  • The closer we get to one, the smaller the denominator gets.

  • And then you divide by smaller and smaller denominators,

  • you're going to become unbounded towards infinity,

  • which is exactly what we see in that first choice.

- [Voiceover] So we're told that f of x

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