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    Derivative Not Continuous

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    YavuzEmine Sazlı
    The document describes a function f(x) that is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but whose derivative f'(x) is not continuous. Specifically: 1) f(x) = x^2 sin(1/x) for x != 0 and f(0) = 0. 2) f(x) is continuous everywhere by the squeeze theorem. 3) f'(x) exists everywhere and is discontinuous at x = 0, since the limit of f'(x) as x approaches 0 does not exist due to oscillation.

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    Derivative Not Continuous

    Uploaded by

    YavuzEmine Sazlı
    10 views2 pages
    The document describes a function f(x) that is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but whose derivative f'(x) is not continuous. Specifically: 1) f(x) = x^2 sin(1/x) for x != 0 and f(0) = 0. 2) f(x) is continuous everywhere by the squeeze theorem. 3) f'(x) exists everywhere and is discontinuous at x = 0, since the limit of f'(x) as x approaches 0 does not exist due to oscillation.

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    The document describes a function f(x) that is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but whose derivative f'(x) is not continuous. Specifically: 1) f(x) = x^2 sin(1/x) for x != 0 and f(0) = 0. 2) f(x) is continuous everywhere by the squeeze theorem. 3) f'(x) exists everywhere and is discontinuous at x = 0, since the limit of f'(x) as x approaches 0 does not exist due to oscillation.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf or txt
    10 views2 pages

    Derivative Not Continuous

    Uploaded by

    YavuzEmine Sazlı
    The document describes a function f(x) that is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but whose derivative f'(x) is not continuous. Specifically: 1) f(x) = x^2 sin(1/x) for x != 0 and f(0) = 0. 2) f(x) is continuous everywhere by the squeeze theorem. 3) f'(x) exists everywhere and is discontinuous at x = 0, since the limit of f'(x) as x approaches 0 does not exist due to oscillation.

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    of 2

    A Continuous Dierentiable Function with Discontinuous Derivative

    May 25, 2009


    Is it possible to have a function which is dierentiable everywhere and the derivative not be continuous? It turns out that there is a fairly simple example of such a creature. First, a general comment. To show that f is continuous, we need f (a) = lim f (x).
    xa

    On the left hand side, f (a) = lim so that f (a + h) f (a) f (x + h) f (x) = lim f (x) = lim lim . xa xa h0 h h To claim equality for this string of limits is to claim that it does not matter which order we compute the
    h0 h0

    f (a + h) f (a) h

    lim

    xa

    lim and lim , but it does matter as we shall see. This may seem like an intuitive thing to do, but re-ordering
    h0

    limits is, in fact, one of the most error-prone aspects of a mathematicians life. But we can do better than this philosophical discussion about limits. Here is an explicit example of a function which is continuous and dierentiable, but does NOT have a continuous derivative. Let x2 sin 1 x = 0 x f (x) = . 0 x=0 The function f is clearly continuous for x = 0, but at x = 0, we need the squeeze theorem to see that
    x0

    lim x2 sin

    1 =0 x

    so that f is continuous for all R. Furthermore, f is dierentiable when x = 0 simply by use of the product and chain rules (try it!) and f (x) = cos 1 1 + 2x sin . x x

    However, we need to use the denition of derivative to compute f (0). Compute f (0) = lim f (0 + h) f (0) h 1 2 h sin h 0 = lim h0 h 1 = lim h sin . h0 h
    h0

    Once again, the squeeze theorem (probably considering one-sided limits) comes to our rescue to compute this nal limit so that f (0) = 0. So f is continuous and f exists for all x, but lets consider the continuity of f (x). For x = 0, clearly f is continuous, but it is not continuous at x = 0. For this continuity we would need f (0) = lim f (x) = lim cos
    x0 x0

    1 1 + 2x sin x x

    1 but this last limit fails to exist at 0 because of the oscillation of cos x .

    Author: Joel B. Mohler

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