How do you find the domain and range of f(x)= 1/x + 5/(x-3)?

1 Answer
Sep 23, 2015

Domain:
All real numbers x except 0 and 3.
In other words, x!=0 and x!=3

Range:
All real numbers.
In other words, -oo < f(x) < +oo

Explanation:

It is traditionally assumed that functions like this, unless specifically mentioned otherwise, are defined for real numbers as argument, having values also among real numbers.

Domain of a real function is a set of values where this function is defined.
The function f(x) = 1/x + 1/(x-3) is defined for all real values of argument x except those where the denominator of one of its two terms equals to 0.
This happens only for x=0, in which case 1/x becomes undefined, and for x=3, in which case 1/(x-3) becomes undefined.

Therefore, the domain of this function is:
all real values except 0 and 3.
It can be written as
x != 0 AND x != 3
Alternatively, it can be written as
-oo < x < 0 OR 0 < x < 3 OR 3 < x < +oo.
One more way:
(-oo,0) uu (0,3) uu (3,+oo)

Range of a real function is a set of values that this function can take while its argument takes all the values from the domain.
To determine the range, let's try to resolve an equation
f(x) = a
for any value a. Every value for which this equation has a solution (a value of x from the domain) belongs to a range.

So, let's try to find all a, for which there is a solution of the equation
1/x + 1/(x-3) = a

We assume that x!=0 and x!=3 since we have already excluded these values of argument, they cannot be solutions, even if we come to these values for some a.

Multiplying the equation by x(x-3), we obtain
x-3 + x = ax(x-3)
or
ax^2+(-3a-2)x+3 = 0

The quadratic equation above has a solution if its discriminant is not negative.
The discriminant of this equation is
(-3a-2)^2 - 4*a*3 = 9a^2+12a+4-12a = 9a^2+4
As we see, the discriminant 9a^2+4 is always positive for any real a. Therefore, any real value can be a value of our function. In other words, the range of our function is all real values.

An interesting exercise would be to graph this function. I suggest to add two graphs, y=1/x and y=1/(x-3). The result would look like
graph{1/x + 1/(x-3) [-10, 10, -5, 5]}