What is an asymptote?

1 Answer
MeneerNask
Jan 28, 2015

An asymptote is a value of a function that you can get very near to, but you can never reach.

Let's take the function y=1/x
graph{1/x [-10, 10, -5, 5]}
You will see, that the larger we make x the closer y will be to 0
but it will never be 0 (x->oo)

In this case we call the line y=0 (the x-axis) an asymptote

On the other hand, x cannot be 0 (you can't divide by0)

So the line x=0 (the y-axis) is another asymptote.

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