Calculus: Early Transcendentals 8th Edition

Published by Cengage Learning
ISBN 10: 1285741552
ISBN 13: 978-1-28574-155-0

Chapter 2 - Section 2.2 - The Limit of a Function - 2.2 Exercises - Page 94: 49

Answer

(a) Since the values are getting very small as $x$ approaches 0, we could guess that $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} (x^2-\frac{2^x}{1000}) = 0$ (b) The values are getting close to $-0.001$ as $x$ approaches 0 more closely. Therefore, we could guess that $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} (x^2-\frac{2^x}{1000}) = -0.001$

Work Step by Step

(a) We can evaluate $f(x) = x^2-(\frac{2^x}{1000})$ for values of $x$ that approach $0$: $f(1) = (1)^2-(\frac{2^{1}}{1000}) = 0.998$ $f(0.8) = (0.8)^2-(\frac{2^{0.8}}{1000}) = 0.63826$ $f(0.6) = (0.6)^2-(\frac{2^{0.6}}{1000}) = 0.35848$ $f(0.4) = (0.4)^2-(\frac{2^{0.4}}{1000}) = 0.15868$ $f(0.2) = (0.2)^2-(\frac{2^{0.2}}{1000}) = 0.03885$ $f(0.1) = (0.1)^2-(\frac{2^{0.1}}{1000}) = 0.008928$ $f(0.05) = (0.05)^2-(\frac{2^{0.05}}{1000}) = 0.0014647$ Since the values are getting very small as $x$ approaches 0, we could guess that $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} (x^2-\frac{2^x}{1000}) = 0$ (b) We can evaluate $f(x) = x^2-(\frac{2^x}{1000})$ for more values of $x$ that approach $0$ more closely: $f(0.04) = (0.04)^2-(\frac{2^{0.04}}{1000}) = 0.000572$ $f(0.02) = (0.02)^2-(\frac{2^{0.02}}{1000}) = -0.000614$ $f(0.01) = (0.01)^2-(\frac{2^{0.01}}{1000}) = -0.000907$ $f(0.005) = (0.005)^2-(\frac{2^{0.005}}{1000}) = -0.0009785$ $f(0.003) = (0.003)^2-(\frac{2^{0.003}}{1000}) = -0.000993$ $f(0.001) = (0.001)^2-(\frac{2^{0.001}}{1000}) = -0.0009997$ The values are getting close to $-0.001$ as $x$ approaches 0 more closely. Therefore, we could guess that $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} (x^2-\frac{2^x}{1000}) = -0.001$
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