Domain / Range for function of one variable:

Determine the domain and range of the given function:

y = x4 + 4
This is just a garden-variety polynomial. There are no denominators (so no division-by-zero
problems) and no radicals (so no square-root-of-a-negative problems). There are no problems
with a polynomial. There are no values that I can't plug in for x. When I have a polynomial, the
answer is always that the domain is "all x".
Determine the domain and range of the given function:

The domain is all values that x can take on. The only problem I have with this function is that I
cannot have a negative inside the square root. So I'll set the insides greater-than-or-equal-to
zero, and solve. The result will be my domain:
2x + 3 > 0
2x > 3
2x < 3
x < 3/2 = 1.5
Then the domain is "all x < 3/2".
Determine the domain and range of the given function:

The domain is all the values that x is allowed to take on. The only problem I have with this
function is that I need to be careful not to divide by zero. So the only values that x can not take on
are those which would cause division by zero. So I'll set the denominator equal to zero and solve;
my domain will be everything else.
x2 x 2 = 0
(x 2)(x + 1) = 0
x = 2 or x = 1
Then the domain is "all x not equal to 1 or 2".
Domain for function of two variables:
Example 1 Determine the domain of each of the following.

(a) (b) (c)

Solution
(a) In this case we know that we cant take the square root of a negative number so this means that we must require,

Here is a sketch of the graph of this region.

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/fcns2.htm
This function is different from the function in the previous part. Here we must require that,

and they really do need to be separate inequalities. There is one for each square root in the function. Here is the
sketch of this region.

(c) In this final part we know that we cant take the logarithm of a negative number or zero. Therefore we need to
require that,

and upon rearranging we see that we need to stay interior to an ellipse for this function. Here is a sketch of this
region.

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/fcns2.htm