Functions: Introduction to functions
Arithmetic operations for continuity
We discuss some methods to create a new continuous function from known continuous functions.
Continuity of sums, products, quotients and compositions of continuous functions
Let be a real number.
- Suppose and are functions continuous in . Then, the functions and are also continuous in . If , then we have the same for .
- Suppose is a function in and that is a function continuous in . Then the composition is continuous in .
The first statement follows from the rules of calculation for the sum, the product and the quotient of two limits. For example, for the sum, we have to show that . This follows from the following steps, in which we use the definition of the sum of two functions, a rule of calculation for limits, the continuity of and in and once again the definition of the sum of two functions in .
The second statement we prove using Limits of continuous functions. We write . Because is continuous in , we have . According to the theory given, we have . But this can be rewritten as . This is the definition of continuity of in .
Continuity of power functions
Let be a real number. If is a function that is continous in with , then is also continuous in .
This follows from the statement: the function is continuous on .
Indeed the original statement follows, by applying rule 2, the continuity of the composition of continuous functions, with .
For a complete proof, we must now prove the statement that is continuous. We will only do this only in the case is rational.
When is an integer , then the statement follows from applying rule 1: the product of two or more continuous functions is again a continuous function. The rule speaks of the product of two functions, but by applying the rule repeatedly, we see that it also applies to products of more functions. Indeed, we can write as a product of continuous functions on :
When has the form for an integer , then we can write as . From this we know that she is continuous on . If is of the form , we can apply rule 1 again. Then it is a product of root functions: , hence, also continuous on .
Indeed,
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