Lucille T.

Sareno

BSA -4

2:00-3:00 MWF

QUESTION:
1
Is
can be a qualified of valid limit of a function?
8

ANSWER:
The limit of a function at a particular point can be an imaginary
number but only if the function is complex-valued.
A function is a map from one space to another.
The functions commonly encountered in introductory calculus
courses are normally real-valued functions, which take a single variable
out of R (the real line), and map that to another value on R. For these
functions, it's impossible for a limit to be an imaginary number.
Functions, however, can take a real or complex argument and return
a complex number. Now the limit of the function at a point could be
imaginary, because the function value could get arbitrarily close to an
imaginary number. So there's no great mystery about limits being
complex or imaginary; if the function value can take on those values, then
limits can be of those values. However, in the familiar R -> R functions
that

are

the

topic

of

early

calculus,

this

just

can't

happen.