Overview
Limits are a construct that are used to find what value a function approaches. It is a fundamental building block of calculus for reasons we will get into in the next thread.
Examples
Lets say we have the function f(x) = (x^3)/(x^2)
, that would be graphed on an xy plane like so:
Now lets say we are trying to find what value f(x) would be as we get closer to 0. We can do that by taking numbers around 0, progressively taking numbers closer and closer to 0, and seeing what those numbers approach. Note that f(0) is still undefined, so you wouldn’t be able to just plug it into the function to get the answer (0^3 / 0^2 = 0/0
, which is an indeterminant form).