Summary of L’Hôpital’s Rule

Essential Concepts

  • L’Hôpital’s rule can be used to evaluate the limit of a quotient when the indeterminate form 00 or arises.
  • L’Hôpital’s rule can also be applied to other indeterminate forms if they can be rewritten in terms of a limit involving a quotient that has the indeterminate form 00 or .
  • The exponential function ex grows faster than any power function xp, p>0.
  • The logarithmic function lnx grows more slowly than any power function xp, p>0.

Glossary

indeterminate forms
when evaluating a limit, the forms 0/0, /, 0, , 00, 0, and 1 are considered indeterminate because further analysis is required to determine whether the limit exists and, if so, what its value is
L’Hôpital’s rule
if f and g are differentiable functions over an interval a, except possibly at a, and limxaf(x)=0=limxag(x) or limxaf(x) and limxag(x) are infinite, then limxaf(x)g(x)=limxaf(x)g(x), assuming the limit on the right exists or is or