Making Connections with Rational Functions

Making Connections with Rational Functions

 

Graphs and functions are a way to visually represent real world trends. Sometimes these graphs so not represent the real world with 100% accuracy. This is because real world situations have a beginning and an end, and functions start at negative infinity and end at positive infinity. This causes some problems.

 

An example of this is on the handout we got for chapter 3.5. The function states that when the fridge was first bought it cost infinity dollars. This is dew to the vertical asymptote along the Y-axis. Since it never touches it the price will keep going up the closer you get to the X=0 line. In real life this does not happen the fridge will start at a set price and go down from there.