Talk:Asymptote

how to

ive said it once ill say it again, these math articles should include ways to find whatever they are talking about. for instnace, this ine should show HOW to find a horizontal asymptote or a vertical. honestly, who is coming here to find a definition that uses complex words and concepts noone but mathematicians understand? keep it simple and show HOW.--Jaysscholar 02:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

totally

I agree. I was looking for a less technical illustration.

oldephebe - theautumnfirecdproject.com

It takes all kinds to make a world. In answer to Jaysscholar's question, I'm a math teacher who advised his students in Calculus class that an asymptotic function can approach the straight-line limit from two sides. I got out a Webster's dictionary and read it to them. They said that my answer conflicted with the back of the book.

Now i have a (fairly) authoritative source which implies I was correct. If anything, I would like the entry to say that monotonic asymptotic functions are to be distinguished from those that are simply asymptotic, which are not necessarioy monotonic. mmeo

This entry on asymptote is illegible to the common reader. A new entry is needed to supplement the technical definitions.

I agree with the last comment, the entry is mathematically correct but clear as mud! My suggestion is to have an idiot's definition somewhere near the top for instance "an asymptote is the line a function never quite reaches" - M Dearman

I agree with the last two comments. I won't go so far as to substitute Dearman's definition for the one in the article (although I like it), but is there any objection to at least deleting the words "arbitrarily closely" from the definition in the article? It not only makes it hard to understand, it's also incorrect. (To me, at least -- but I'm just a layperson. Maybe I'm missing something?) As far as I can tell, there's nothing "arbitrary" about the distance of the curve from the asymptote at any given location. The point's location is given by the function. -- M.C.

I am STRONGLY in favour of having a "How To" on this page!! OI am currently in my last year of highschool and came to this webpage specifically for that. To my dismay there wasn't a "How To" section. PLEASE won't someone add one SOON! Thanks Plenty.. TejeTeje 10:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well to be honest why are you going to want to find out what an asymptote is if you're not a mathematician? It's not much use in everyday life is it? As a 16 year old A-level maths student, I found the definition of an asymptote very useful to me, although admittedly I didn't read all of the information regarding the subject because it wasn't relevant and I could glean the information that I needed from the diagrams! [unsigned comment added 09:51 19 October 2006 (UTC) by user 88.109.143.31]

wrong definition

The definition of an asymptote is wrong... e.g. y=sin (e^x) has asymptote y=0, bu the curve does intersect 0 at times..

The definition was wrong; I've corrected it. Your example, though isn't right: it's not asymptotic to y=0. Perhaps you meant something like y = sin(e^x)/e^x which is nicely asymptotic to y=0 and hits it infinitely many times. It's also asymptotic to y=1! A great example! Doctormatt 03:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1 July 2006 changes

I just made a bunch of changes to the page. I expanded (i.e., made it longer) the layman's definition to make it both (I hope) more accurate and clearer. I really want to emphasize the point that the curve can cross the asymptote, so phrases like "never quite reaches" are not correct.

I didn't use the phrase "arbitrarily closely" since it does seem to cause problems.

I think it important to make it clear whether one is talking about asymptotes of graphs of functions, or of more general curves. To this end, I split a lot of the page into a "graphs of functions" section.

Let me know what you think.

Doctormatt 03:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vertical Asymptote

Is it correct that x=a is an asymptote of f(x) if "limit of f(x) as x->-a = +or-infinity". It is written in the article.

It doesn't say that. If says x=a is an asymptote if the limit of f(x) as x->a from the left = + or - infinity, or the limit of f(x) as x->a from the right is + or - infinity. "-a" never comes into it. I just noticed though that the one-sided limits are indicated using superscripts, so I changed it. Doctormatt 17:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]