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Indeterminate Forms
When you do direct plugging in to solve a limit, you often get or . Sometimes you can even get things as whacky as , , , or . These are called indeterminate forms because we can make these limits equal to whatever we want. For example, we can have
or
or
and we can get any result we want!
However, there are some very distinct forms that are NOT indeterminate forms. For example, if you plug in and get , this is not an indeterminate form because the limits can only be . Also, is not indeterminate because it is .
L'Hospital's Rule can only be applied when you see an indeterminate form. Otherwise, if direct plugging in does not work, the limit does not exist. L'Hospital's Rule can be applied over and over to a limit until direct substitution does not yield an indeterminate form.