Re: Limit of an expression?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg67595] Re: Limit of an expression?
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
- Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2006 05:12:49 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 30 Jun 2006, at 11:49, David W. Cantrell wrote: > [Message also posted to: comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica] > > Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote: >> On 28 Jun 2006, at 16:51, Virgil Stokes wrote: >> >>> In the following expression, s is an integer (>= 1), Lambda, Mu, >>> and t >>> are real numbers and all > 0. >>> What is the limit of the following as t goes to infinity? >>> >>> \!\(\(1 - \[ExponentialE]\^\(\(-\[Mu]\)\ t\ \((s - 1 - \ >>> \[Lambda]\/\[Mu])\)\)\)\/\(s - 1 - \[Lambda]\/\[Mu]\)\) >>> >>> --V. Stokes >>> >> >> Unless you made a mistake in the formula you posted, the answer >> depends on the sign of s - 1 - λ/μ. Mathematica can deal with all >> three possible cases (it is also pretty obvious when done by hand): >> >> (Limit[(1 - E^((-μ)*t* >> (s - 1 - λ/μ)))/ >> (s - 1 - λ/μ), >> t -> Infinity, >> Assumptions -> >> {μ > 0 && #1[s, >> 1 + λ/μ]}] & ) /@ >> {Greater, Equal, Less} >> >> {-(μ/(λ - s*μ + μ)), >> 0, Infinity} > > Much of the above is illegible to me, but I'm guessing that the > middle case > is equivalent to > > In[1]:= Assuming[a==0, Limit[(1 - Exp[a t])/a, t->Infinity]] > > Out[1]= 0 > > which does not seem to be reasonable in Mathematica. I would have > expected > Indeterminate instead. > > David I agree. (I neglected to pay careful attention to the output when I posted the above - sometimes I have too much trust in Mathematica I guess ;-) ). If you look at Trace with the option TraceInternal->True you can see how Mathematica arrives at this. Essentially, at some point it evaluates Simplify[1 - E^(a*t), Assumptions -> {a == 0}] and then it concludes that the whole expression is 0, without ever noticing that the denominator is also assumed to be zero. This, I think, should count as a bug. Andrzej Kozlowski Tokyo, Japan