indeterminate form

00

is known as the indeterminate form. The motivation for this name is that there are no rules for comparing the value of 00 to the other real numbers. Note that, for example, 10 is not indeterminate, since we can justifiably associate it with +, which does compare with the rest of the real numbers (in particular, it is defined to be greater than all of them.)

1 Other Indeterminate Forms

Although 00 is often called “the” indeterminate form, there are many others. Some of these are:

  1. 1.

    , for the same motivating reasons as 00.

  2. 2.

    00; which is the result of much impassioned debate (especially since 0! is defined to be 1, counter-intuitively, but not unreasonably).

  3. 3.

    1; notably because of the derivation of e:

    limn(1+1n)n=e

    A direct substitution would yield 1.

Title indeterminate form
Canonical name IndeterminateForm
Date of creation 2013-03-22 12:28:19
Last modified on 2013-03-22 12:28:19
Owner akrowne (2)
Last modified by akrowne (2)
Numerical id 7
Author akrowne (2)
Entry type Definition
Classification msc 12D99
Synonym indeterminate value
Related topic LHpitalsRule
Related topic ImproperLimits
Related topic EmptyProduct