Professional Documents
Culture Documents
x : x
Let’s
Does that translate:
look like a foreign
language?
The curly braces
just tell us we have a set of
numbers.
The x reminds us
that our set contains x-values.
x
The colon says,
such that
x :
The symbol that looks like an e
(or a c sticking its tongue out)
says, belongs to . . .
x : x
And the cursive, or script,
R
is short for the set of real numbers.
x: x
So we read it, “The set
of x such that x belongs to
R, the set of real numbers.”
x : x
When we put 11 in for x,
y was 17.
If x 11
y 17
So 17 belongs to
the range of the function,
y 2 x 5.
y : y
“The set of y, such that
y belongs to R,
the set of real numbers.”
It is not always true that
the domain and range
can be any real number.
Sometimes mathematicians
want to study a function over
a limited domain.
They might think about
the function
y x 4
2
not –16.
There is no real number we can
square to get a negative number.
So no negative number can belong
to the domain of
y x
The smallest number for which
we can find a square root is 0,
so the domain of
y x
is
x : x 0
Find the domain of each function:
1
1. y
x5
2. y 4 x 17
3. y x 9
4. y x 99
2
Answers:
1. x : x 5
2. x : x
3. x : x 9
4. x : x