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).
![$P \in \mathbb R[x,y]$](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/8/a/0/8a0576299e976c51607959fb68c7c742b2a49c6a.png)
with ![$P \not\in \mathbb R[x] \cup \mathbb R[y]$](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/a/f/7/af71ba8c643d5bd8a2928fa6714ccd91713bd641.png)
and 
homeomorphismes of 
, 
is an homoemorphisme too.
, such that 
and 
are both integers.
+1 w
be real numbers such that 
Prove that 
Let be real numbers such that 
Prove that 
MathJuice bottles and Bob starts with 
MathJuice bottles. An unfair coin is then flipped, with probability 
of landing heads. If the coin lands heads, Alice gives Bob a bottle; otherwise, Bob gives Alice a bottle. This process repeats until someone runs out of bottles.
rest on a plane. A sphere with radius 
is tangent to all of them, but does not intersect nor lie on the plane. A sphere with radius 
lies on the plane, and is tangent to all three spheres with radius 
Compute the shortest distance between the sphere with radius and the sphere with radius 
, there exists the positive integers 
, such that for 
, With 
may be formed as a triangle side length , and the area of the triangle is a positive integer.
with rational sides, obtuse angle at 
, and shortest side 
. If we replace with its reflection over the altitude from 
, the new triangle has the same altitude and rational sides. You can determine how many times this construction can be iterated by looking at angles.
with rational sides, obtuse angle at , and shortest side . If we replace with its reflection over the altitude from , the new triangle has the same altitude and rational sides.
and let 
be the length of the altitude from 
Also let 
be the foot of the 
-altitude on 
and let 
It is clear that 
and 
so by subtracting these equations we find that 
as desired.
and second smallest angle 
Clearly the obtuse angle has measure 
Upon performing the operation described in Lemma 1 we find that the new triangle has an angle with measure 
We can perform this operation so long as the triangle we have is obtuse (and it is clear that if after the operation we obtain a new, obtuse triangle, the "new" side length is the longest side of the triangle. Therefore by forcing 
to be sufficiently small (which is equivalent to the original obtuse angle being sufficiently large), we can perform arbitrarily many operations.
degrees. But this isn't hard - consider the triangle with side lengths 
and 
and 
The altitude to the shortest side's length can be computed to be 
It is clear that as we let 
be a sufficiently large rational number, our triangle becomes "arbitrarily obtuse" so we are done.
with rational sides, obtuse angle at , and shortest side . If we replace with its reflection over the altitude from , the new triangle has the same altitude and rational sides. and let be the length of the altitude from Also let be the foot of the -altitude on and let It is clear that and so by subtracting these equations we find that as desired. and second smallest angle Clearly the obtuse angle has measure Upon performing the operation described in Lemma 1 we find that the new triangle has an angle with measure We can perform this operation so long as the triangle we have is obtuse (and it is clear that if after the operation we obtain a new, obtuse triangle, the "new" side length is the longest side of the triangle. Therefore by forcing to be sufficiently small (which is equivalent to the original obtuse angle being sufficiently large), we can perform arbitrarily many operations. degrees. But this isn't hard - consider the triangle with side lengths and and The altitude to the shortest side's length can be computed to be It is clear that as we let be a sufficiently large rational number, our triangle becomes "arbitrarily obtuse" so we are done. and and 
), please ?????
. To make the area is an integer, we may use Heron formula, which implies 
is square. An intuitive thought is to make 
. Hence 
is a square, and we can make 
, let 
the the last two terms in the sequence. We want to construct the n+1-th term. Skale everything by a factor of 
( to be defined later).
satisfying the hypothesis. I just need to solve the system of equations:
and 
such that 
This is very easy 
