Asymptotic comparison – I

In the coming posts, I want to discuss the notions of asymptotic comparison, which is essentially the mathy way of saying "these two things look alike" or "this one is much larger than this other one". The point, as with many new notions, is to simplify. Most of the expressions / formulas / functions that … Continue reading Asymptotic comparison – I →

Matrix multiplication

How do you multiply matrices? I realized that the technique that I learned back in the days is not as common as I thought. I often see my students struggling to perform simple matrix multiplications, and I would argue that part of the reason is that they write them side-by-side. This is also what I … Continue reading Matrix multiplication →

L’Hospital rule

I had never heard of L'Hospital rule before I had to teach it, one fateful morning of 2012 at the University of Toronto. The class was your standard Calculus 1 class, where L'Hospital rule features prominently as your one-size-fits-all trick to compute limits. "How come I never heard of this?", I thought. That's when I … Continue reading L’Hospital rule →