See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Archive-Name: sci-math-faq/specialnumbers/0to0 Last-modified: April 26, 1995 Version: 6.2 What is 0^0 According to some Calculus textbooks, 0^0 is an ``indeterminate form''. When evaluating a limit of the form 0^0 , then you need to know that limits of that form are called ``indeterminate forms'', and that you need to use a special technique such as L'Hopital's rule to evaluate them. Otherwise, 0^0 = 1 seems to be the most useful choice for 0^0 . This convention allows us to extend definitions in different areas of mathematics that otherwise would require treating 0 as a special case. Notice that 0^0 is a discontinuity of the function x^y . This means that depending on the context where 0^0 occurs, you might wish to substitute it with 1, indeterminate or undefined/nonexistent. Some people feel that giving a value to a function with an essential discontinuity at a point, such as x^y at (0,0) , is an inelegant patch and should not be done. Others point out correctly that in mathematics, usefulness and consistency are very important, and that under these parameters 0^0 = 1 is the natural choice. The following is a list of reasons why 0^0 should be 1. Rotando &Korn show that if f and g are real functions that vanish at the origin and are analytic at 0 (infinitely differentiable is not sufficient), then f(x)^g(x) approaches 1 as x approaches 0 from the right. From Concrete Mathematics p.162 (R. Graham, D. Knuth, O. Patashnik): Some textbooks leave the quantity 0^0 undefined, because the functions x^0 and 0^x have different limiting values when x decreases to 0. But this is a mistake. We must define x^0=1 for all x , if the binomial theorem is to be valid when x = 0 , y = 0 , and/or x = -y . The theorem is too important to be arbitrarily restricted! By contrast, the function 0^x is quite unimportant. Published by Addison-Wesley, 2nd printing Dec, 1988. As a rule of thumb, one can say that 0^0 = 1 , but 0.0^(0.0) is undefined, meaning that when approaching from a different direction there is no clearly predetermined value to assign to 0.0^(0.0) ; but Kahan has argued that 0.0^(0.0) should be 1, because if f(x), g(x) --> 0 as x approaches some limit, and f(x) and g(x) are analytic functions, then f(x)^g(x) --> 1 . The discussion on 0^0 is very old, Euler argues for 0^0 = 1 since a^0 = 1 for a != 0 . The controversy raged throughout the nineteenth century, but was mainly conducted in the pages of the lesser journals: Grunert's Archiv and Schlomilch's Zeitshrift. Consensus has recently been built around setting the value of 0^0 = 1 . On a discussion of the use of the function 0^(0^x) by an Italian mathematician named Guglielmo Libri. [T]he paper [33] did produce several ripples in mathematical waters when it originally appeared, because it stirred up a controversy about whether 0^0 is defined. Most mathematicians agreed that 0^0 = 1 , but Cauchy [5, page 70] had listed 0^0 together with other expressions like 0/0 and oo - oo in a table of undefined forms. Libri's justification for the equation 0^0 = 1 was far from convincing, and a commentator who signed his name simply ``S'' rose to the attack [45]. August Mvbius [36] defended Libri, by presenting his former professor's reason for believing that 0^0 = 1 (basically a proof that lim_(x --> 0+) x^x = 1 ). Mvbius also went further and presented a supposed proof that lim_(x --> 0+) f(x)^(g(x)) whenever lim_(x --> 0+) f(x) = lim_(x --> 0+) g(x) = 0 . Of course ``S'' then asked [3] whether Mvbius knew about functions such as f(x) = e^(-1/x) and g(x) = x . (And paper [36] was quietly omitted from the historical record when the collected words of Mvbius were ultimately published.) The debate stopped there, apparently with the conclusion that 0^0 should be undefined. But no, no, ten thousand times no! Anybody who wants the binomial theorem (x + y)^n = sum_(k = 0)^n (n\choose k) x^k y^(n - k) to hold for at least one nonnegative integer n must believe that 0^0 = 1 , for we can plug in x = 0 and y = 1 to get 1 on the left and 0^0 on the right. The number of mappings from the empty set to the empty set is 0^0 . It has to be 1. On the other hand, Cauchy had good reason to consider 0^0 as an undefined limiting form, in the sense that the limiting value of f(x)^(g(x)) is not known a priori when f(x) and g(x) approach 0 independently. In this much stronger sense, the value of 0^0 is less defined than, say, the value of 0 + 0 . Both Cauchy and Libri were right, but Libri and his defenders did not understand why truth was on their side. [3] Anonymous and S ... Bemerkungen zu den Aufsatze |berschrieben, `Beweis der Gleichung ... , nach J. F. Pfaff', im zweiten Hefte dieses Bandes, S. 134, Journal f|r die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 12 (1834), 292-294. [5] Oe uvres Complhtes. Augustin-Louis Cauchy. Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Royale Polytechnique (1821). Series 2, volume 3. [33] Guillaume Libri. Mimoire sur les fonctions discontinues, Journal f|r die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 10 (1833), 303-316. [36] A. F. Mvbius. Beweis der Gleichung 0^0 = 1 , nach J. F. Pfaff. Journal f|r die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 12 (1834), 134-136. [45] S ... Sur la valeur de 0^0 . Journal f|r die reine und angewandte Mathematik 11, (1834), 272-273. References Knuth. Two notes on notation. (AMM 99 no. 5 (May 1992), 403-422). H. E. Vaughan. The expression ' 0^0 '. Mathematics Teacher 63 (1970), pp.111-112. Louis M. Rotando and Henry Korn. The Indeterminate Form 0^0 . Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 1977), pp. 41-42. L. J. Paige,. A note on indeterminate forms. American Mathematical Monthly, 61 (1954), 189-190; reprinted in the Mathematical Association of America's 1969 volume, Selected Papers on Calculus, pp. 210-211. Baxley &Hayashi. A note on indeterminate forms. American Mathematical Monthly, 85 (1978), pp. 484-486. _________________________________________________________________ alopez-o@barrow.uwaterloo.ca Tue Apr 04 17:26:57 EDT 1995 User Contributions:Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:
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