Welcome to calculus.

I'm Professor Greist, and we're about to

begin lecture eight on L'Hopital's Rule.
Everyone who's had some exposure to
calculus knows of L'Hopital's Rule.
Everyone who knows L'Hopital's Rule loves
L'Hopital's Rule.
But who understands why L'Hopital's Rule
works?
By the end of this lesson, you will.
Recall that when faced with a tricky
limit, L'Hopital's Rule is a good method.
For example, if we look at the limit as x
goes to zero of sine of x over x Or the
limit as x goes to 0, of 1 minus cos of
x, over x.
You probably remember that the way to
deal with these is to differentiate, the
numerator and the denominator.
The derivative of sin is cos.
The derivative of x is 1.
Taking that limit gives you the correct
answer of 1.
Likewise in the second example, the
derivatives of the numerator and
denominator give sign of x and 1
respectively, leading to an answer of
zero.
But what does L'Hopital's rule really
say?
Remember the way that it is applied.
You begin with a limit of the form of a
quotient, say f of x over g of x.
Then you try to evaluate the limit.
If that works, then great you're done.
If that doesn't work, then L'Hopital's
rule says to differentiate both the
numerator and the denominator.
Try to evaluate the limit again, if that
works, great, you're done.
If not, repeat until it does work.
Now, the error that some students make is
to begin differentiating as soon as they
see a limit that looks like a quotient.
That is a bad idea.
It will fail in those cases.
But, the question is, why, why does it
work?
Why, if it doesn't work the first time,
do you keep trying until it does?
Let us use the perspectives that we've
worked with so far and Taylor expand the
terms if we have the limit as x goes to a
of f of x over g of x.
Then expand both the numerator and the
denominator about the input, a now in the
context of L'Hopital's rule.
Lets consider the case where the limit of
f is zero and the limit of g is zero.

That means that the zeroth order terms

both vanish.
What do we see?
Well, we see that we can factor.
The quantity x minus a from all remaining
terms in the Taylor expansions in both
the numerator and the denominator these
cancel and now when we try to evaluate x
minus a we're left with the leading order
terms.
The constants, really the direvatives
evaluated at a Now, if those 2 were to
vanish, then what would happen?
Well, we see that once again, we can
factor out the quantity x minus a, cancel
and again, we see that the leading order
terms involve the second derivatives at
A.
Now, you might wonder, what about the 1
over 2 factorial?
Since it appears in both the numerator
and the denominator, it doesn't matter.
What really matters is the derivatives.
Let's look at this in an example.
Sometimes, L'Hopital's rule is much
easier to apply than a Taylor series.
For example, if we take the limit as x
goes to zero, a tangent of x over arcsin
of x.
Well, I don't know the Taylor Series for
tangent and arcsin off the top of my head
and it might take a log of work to figure
that out.
So let's apply L'Hopital's Rule.
If we try to differentiate, well, that's
going to take a little bit of
recollection.
You may or may not remember that the
derivative of tangent is the secant
squared.
You may or may not remember that the
derivative of arcsin Is 1 minus x squared
to the negative 1 half power.
If you don't remember this, don't worry,
we'll learn how to compute these in just
a few short lessons.
But for the moment, let's take it as a
given.
Using L'Hopital's Rule, we get the limit
as x goes to zero of secant squared x,
over 1 minus x squared to the negative 1
half.
Evaluating at zero, and remembering that
secant of zero is one gives us our answer
of one.
That was simple.
Let's look at another example.
One for which L'Hopital's Rule might not
be the way to go.
The limit as x goes to zero of x squared

log of cosine of x over sine squared of 3

x squared.
Whew, I do not want to try to compute The
derivative of that.
It's possible, but not profitable.
However, I recall the Taylor expansions
for cosine of x, for log of 1 plus
something, and for sine of something.
These are all very simple.
We've done these before.
Now, using the fact that the limit is as
x goes to zero, and cosine of x about
zero is one minus x squared over two plus
higher order terms.
Then, substituting in for sin, 3x
squared, and dropping all the higher
order terms of sin, and then we have to
square that.
Oh, this way is not so easy either.
But, it's not that bad, we're left with
expanding log of 1 minus x squared over 2
plus higher order terms.
That is in the form log of 1 plus z.
The first term is z itself, in this case,
negative 1 half x squared.
We'll forget about the higher order
terms, hopefully, they won't matter and
the denominator, when we square 3 x
squared plus higher order terms, the
first term is 9 x to the 4th.
Whew, and now we see that the leading
order terms are of the same degree, we
got negative 1 half x to the 4th plus
stuff over 9x to the 4th plus stuff.
Factoring out an x to the 4th and
cancelling gives us an answer of negative
1 18th.
Now, not all tricky limits are in the
form 0 over 0.
For example, the limit as x goes to 0 of
1 over sine squared x minus 1 over x
squared.
Evaluating looks like infinity minus
infinity.
That's not going to work.
So, let us put this over the common
denominator of x squared times sine
squared of x.
The resulting numerator is x squared
minus sine squared of x.
Now we can apply L'Hopital's rule, or in
this case, Taylor expansion.
If we Taylor expand, well, the only thing
we need to worry about is sin squared of
x, which is the Taylor series for sin of
x, quantity squared.
What we really want to do is compute the
leading order term.
So we're going to have a little bit of
algebra to do when we square x minus x

cubed over 3 factorial plus higher order

terms, what do we get?
The first term is x squared, the second
term is 2 times x times x cubed over 3
factorial.
Now, what do we note here?
We note that the x squareds cancel.
Those second ordered terms, they go away
and we're left with the next term.
The fourth order term as the leading
order coefficient.
Likewise, in the denominator, we see that
the leading order term is simply x to the
4th, thus cancelling the x to the 4ths
gives us leading order coefficients of 1
3rd in the numerator and one in the
denominator.
Our answer is 1 3rd.
Likewise, if we consider x times log of x
and send x to 0.
We're going to have to be a little
careful.
This is a one-sided limit, sending x to 0
from the right.
Then, what would this be?
While x is going to 0, log of x is going
to minus infinity.
0 times minus infinity, that's not going
to work.
Once again, let us put this over a
denominator.
In this case, we'll move the x to the
denominator and call it 1 over x.
So that we have a ratio of two functions.
In this case, log of x over x to the
minus 1.
Now, we're going to apply L'Hopital's
Rule.
I'm a little nervous about Taylor
expansions here, because both log of x
and 1 over x, don't seem to have good
Taylor expansions at x equals 0.
So, applying L'Hopital's Rule gives us
what?
The derivative of log of x is 1 over x.
The derivative of 1 over x is minus 1
over x squared.
These simplify to minus x and taking the
limit as x goes to 0 from the right, we
see that the answer is 0.
Now, L'Hopital's rule can also help in
evaluating limits at infinity.
Consider the limit as x goes to infinity.
Of log of x over square root of x.
It's maybe not apparent what that limit
is going to be.
Log of x and square root of x, both
become infinite as x goes to infinity.
But at what rate?
Is there one that is bigger than the

other?
Well, let's apply L'Hopital's Rule.
This gives us the limit as x goes to
infinity of what?
The derivative log of x is 1 over x.
The derivative of x to the one half is
one half x to the minus one half.
This simplifies to twice x to the minus 1
half as x goes to infinity, this clearly
goes to 0.
Well, that's the answer.
But what does that really mean?
A log of x is going to infinity, square
root of x is going to infinity, their
ratio is going to 0.
What that really means is that the square
root of x dominates the log of x.
It grows much faster than the logarithm
does.
While it's true that L'Hopital's rule
tends to be helpful in evaluating limits
and infinity, it's not universally
helpful.
Sometimes you have to think, consider the
limit as x goes to infinity, the
hyperbolic tangent of x.
That is by definition the limit.
The hyperbolic sine over the hyperbolic
cosine.
Let's apply L'Hopital's rule.
Well, this is easy.
What's the derivative of sinh?
It's cosh.
What's the derivative of cosh?
It's sinh.
And so we see, we get the limit as x goes
to infinity of the hyperbolic cotangent
of x.
I don't know what that is.
So, let's apply L'Hopitals rule.
Again, the derivative of sinh is cosh and
of cosh is sinh.
And unfortunately, we're stuck in a loop
and we'll never get anywhere.
But, using our collective head, we know
the definition for the hyperbolic
tangent.
What we really care about is the ratio of
e to the x minus e to the minus x over e
to the x plus e to the minus x.
Now, let's think about that.
Those first terms are big, e to the x
gets large very quickly as x goes to
infinity and e to the minus x gets very,
very small.
Let's ignore it.
What would we get?
Well, I think you could argue that the
limit to be 1.
Now, how could we make that a little more

precise?
If we factor out an e to the x, we're
left with 1 minus something going to 0 in
the numerator and 1 plus something going
to 0 in the denominator.
Canceling gives us, easily, this limit.
This is a useful way to argue.
Consider the limit of x times log of x
over log, the hyperbolic cosine as x goes
to infinity.
I'm going to let you do the work to apply
L'Hopital's Rule and see what we get.
What we're going to get winds up looking
a little complicated.
Fortunately, there's a hyperbolic tangent
involved which allows us to use a
previous result to say that the numerator
is going to infinity, while the
denominator goes to 1.
What I want you to do is think about how
that answer of infinity could be obtained
in your head without L'Hopital's Rule.
Consider the hyperbolic cosine of x.
That's really e to the x plus something
small up to a constant of 1 half.
Now, if we take the natural log of that,
that should look something like x.
Not exactly, but it should grow linearly.
And so, I would argue that x times log of
x divided by something that grows like x
should give us an infinite limit.
That's a foreshadowing of what is to
come.
Where we want to have a language for
discussing or controlling growth of
functions, this is called big O, and it's
a beautiful language.
L'Hopital's Rule, together with Taylor
Series, form a wonderful set of tools for
evaluating limits.
In our next lesson, we'll put these tools
to use in studying asymptotics or growth
rates of functions.
Along the way, we'll augment our tools
with one more device, that of big O.