AoPS Academy
, 
,
, 
, why 
or even expressions of those terms combined as if that would make them defined. I have made this post to answer these questions once and for all, and I politely ask everyone to link this post to threads that are talking about this issue.. It is usually regarded that 
, not because this works numerically but because it is convenient to define it this way. You will see the convenience of defining other undefined things later on in this post.? The issue here is that 
isn't even rigorously defined in this expression. What exactly do we mean by ? Unless the example in question is put in context in a formal manner, then we say that is meaningless.? Suppose that 
. Then we would have 
, absurd. A more rigorous treatment of the idea is that 
does not exist in the first place, although you will see why in a calculus course. So the point is that is undefined.
? An article from brilliant has a good explanation. Alternatively, you can just use a geometric series. Notice that
? Usually this is considered to be an indeterminate form, but I would also wager that this is also undefined.
indeterminate? In analysis (the theory behind calculus and beyond), limits involving an algebraic combination of functions in an independent variable may often be evaluated by replacing these functions by their limits. However, if the expression obtained after this substitution does not provide sufficient information to determine the original limit, then the expression is called an indeterminate form. For example, we could say that is an indeterminate form.
, 
or , obtained by applying the algebraic limit theorem (a theorem in analysis, look this up for details) in the process of attempting to determine a limit, which fails to restrict that limit to one specific value or infinity, and thus does not determine the limit being calculated. This is why it is called indeterminate. Some examples of indeterminate forms are![\[0/0, \infty/\infty, \infty-\infty, \infty \times 0\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/2/6/0/260f97a1cf1ea8722ff97a29b83bac7bfe83e577.png)
etc etc. So what makes something undefined? In the broader scope, something being undefined refers to an expression which is not assigned an interpretation or a value. A function is said to be undefined for points outside its domain. For example, the function 
given by the mapping 
is undefined for 
. On the other hand, 
is undefined because dividing by is not defined in arithmetic by definition. In other words, something is undefined when it is not defined in some mathematical context. is considered both indeterminate and undefined (but in the context of a limit then it is considered in indeterminate form). Additionally, this notion of something being undefined also means that we can define it in some way. To rephrase, this means that technically, we can make something that is undefined to something that is defined as long as we define it. I'll show you what I mean.![\[\overline{\mathbb{R}}=\mathbb{R}\cup \{-\infty,+\infty\}.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/9/9/3/993c78b62ec2c84b5d77daa8e9a8cd6f70fcf904.png)
So instead of treating infinity as an idea, we define infinity (positively and negatively, mind you) as actual numbers in the reals. The advantage of doing this is for two reasons. The first is because we can turn this thing into a totally ordered set. Specifically, we can let 
for each 
which means that via this order topology each subset has an infimum and supremum and 
is therefore compact. While this is nice from an analytic standpoint, extending the reals in this way can allow for interesting arithmetic! In it is perfectly OK to say that,![\begin{align*}
a + \infty = \infty + a & = \infty, & a & \neq -\infty \\
a - \infty = -\infty + a & = -\infty, & a & \neq \infty \\
a \cdot (\pm\infty) = \pm\infty \cdot a & = \pm\infty, & a & \in (0, +\infty] \\
a \cdot (\pm\infty) = \pm\infty \cdot a & = \mp\infty, & a & \in [-\infty, 0) \\
\frac{a}{\pm\infty} & = 0, & a & \in \mathbb{R} \\
\frac{\pm\infty}{a} & = \pm\infty, & a & \in (0, +\infty) \\
\frac{\pm\infty}{a} & = \mp\infty, & a & \in (-\infty, 0).
\end{align*}](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/6/d/8/6d8fc1eca5c791d430a7168cd3b37a02104fa318.png)
So addition, multiplication, and division are all defined nicely. However, notice that we have some indeterminate forms here which are also undefined,![\[\infty-\infty,\frac{\pm\infty}{\pm\infty},\frac{\pm\infty}{0},0\cdot \pm\infty.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/a/0/b/a0b67076efcc014c78b2023be1151c84b57c1503.png)
So while we define certain things, we also left others undefined/indeterminate in the process! However, in the context of measure theory it is common to define 
as greenturtle3141 noted below. I encourage to reread what he wrote, it's great stuff! As you may notice, though, dividing by is undefined still! Is there a place where it isn't? Kind of. To do this, we can extend the complex numbers! More formally, we can define this extension as![\[\mathbb{C}^*=\mathbb{C}\cup\{\tilde{\infty}\}\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/8/4/e/84ed3d6ab237df970333b87beaef5311caa46185.png)
which we call the Riemann Sphere (it actually forms a sphere, pretty cool right?). As a note, 
means complex infinity, since we are in the complex plane now. Here's the catch: division by is allowed here! In fact, we have![\[\frac{z}{0}=\tilde{\infty},\frac{z}{\tilde{\infty}}=0.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/1/6/0/160cb939707708ff4e0930724df2928af11d7fd1.png)
where 
and are left undefined. We also have
Furthermore, we actually have some nice properties with multiplication that we didn't have before. In 
it holds that![\[\tilde{\infty}\times \tilde{\infty}=\tilde{\infty}\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/8/e/0/8e035b4841d20c5ad671c46355cc667ca01e533b.png)
but 
and 
are left as undefined (unless there is an explicit need to change that somehow). One could define the projectively extended reals as we did with , by defining them as![\[{\widehat {\mathbb {R} }}=\mathbb {R} \cup \{\infty \}.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/c/0/4/c044ff37849acad3b8b280b9753539225a1276ca.png)
They behave in a similar way to the Riemann Sphere, with division by also being allowed with the same indeterminate forms (in addition to some other ones).
be a positive integer. Find all real solutions 
to the system:![\[a_1^2 + a_1 - 1 = a_2\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/a/4/e/a4e26b83c929b82800576bac11e12de0c3aa1cf6.png)
![\[ a_2^2 + a_2 - 1 = a_3\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/9/9/5/995e8eec93828b82901b0639463f907f5ff95d08.png)
![\[\hspace*{3.3em} \vdots \]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/e/e/1/ee15e1fefe2ad550d3c9b1c51207eaf66fbfa41f.png)
![\[a_{n}^2 + a_n - 1 = a_1\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/7/c/7/7c727d1f2044c1bf7c80981e1074bb3cde807b8f.png)
the points 
and 
are the feet of the altitudes through 
and 
respectively. The incenters of the triangles 
and 
are 
and 
respectively; the circumcenters of the triangles 
and 
are 
and 
respectively. Prove that 
and 
are parallel.
with 
prime and ![\[a^p+b^p=p!.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/f/e/b/feb27894b1f6497559eeb094cfe92256bc26688e.png)
liters of milk. Then, 
liters are removed from the container and replaced with liters of water. This process of replacing liters of the liquid in the container with an equal volume of water is continued repeatedly. The smallest number of times of doing this process, after which the volume of milk in the container becomes less than that of water, is
and are fill pipes while Pipe 
is a drain pipe of a tank. Pipe empties the full tank in one hour less than the time taken by Pipe to fill the empty tank. When pipes 
and are turned on together, the empty tank is filled in two hours. If pipes and are turned on together when the tank is empty and Pipe is turned off after one hour, then Pipe takes another one hour and 
minutes to fill the remaining tank. If Pipe can fill the empty tank in less than five hours, then the time taken, in minutes, by Pipe to fill the empty tank is
kg of these grains to the first customer. Then, it sells half of the remaining quantity and an additional kg of these grains to the second customer. Finally, when the shop sells half of the remaining quantity and an additional kg of these grains to the third customer, there are no grains left. The initial quantity, in kg, of grains is
and not 
?
and the subset of multiples of 
or it follows that 
. To see this value is always attainable, write 
for 
and let 
be the union of all 
for 
- then for 
by Pigeonhole one of the tuples has at least 
elements in 
, while for 
it is either again this, or contains consecutive integers from 
. In any case, contains a tuple of consecutive integers and hence a triple 
of integers. The latter are pairwise coprime, so we are done.
such that 
.
and 
intersect at the point 
.
?
,
.
are chosen from 0 to 1. What is the probability that their positive difference is more than 
?
?
families, there are 
children respectively. If a random child from any of the families is chosen, what is the probability that the child has 
,
such that 
.
,
lies on diagonal 
such that 
.
.
has 
,
,
.
.
,
,
,
there are at least 
,
.
,
,
,
are mutually prime.
,
,
.
,
,
,
,
.
.
.
,
.
are all even.
are not mutually prime, so 
.
.
,
are 
.
.
implies that 
.
,
.
,
,
.
So 
,
,
,
And 
,
groups
,
numbers 
.
numbers, there are at least 
numbers which are contained in the above 
,