Spivak, Calculus, Ch 5 – Limits, Problem **23a: Why can we use the trick $g(x)=\frac{f(x)g(x)}{f(x)}$

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Problem 22 from Chapter 5 of Spivak's Calculus is as follows:

Consider the function $f$ with the following property: if $g$ is any
function for which $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x)$ does not exist, then
$\lim\limits_{x \to 0} [f(x) + g(x)]$ also does not exist. Prove that
this happens if and only if $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)$ does exist.

Problem 23 is a variation on the above problem that apparently makes it significantly more complex:

This problem is an analogue of Problem 22 when $f+g$ is replaced by $f \cdot g$. In this case the situation is considerably more complex, and
the analysis requires several steps.

a) Suppose $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)$ exists and is $\neq 0$. Prove
that if $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x)$ does not exist, then
$\lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x)$ also does not exist.

I am interested specifically in this item $a)$. I came up with the same solution as the solution manual I believe. Here is the solution from the solution manual, but the latter is very terse:

If $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x)$ existed, then $\lim\limits_{x \to
> 0} g(x) = \lim\limits_{x \to 0} [f(x)g(x)/f(x)]$
would also exist

Here is my solution:

The complete statement that we would like to prove in Problem 23 is

$$\forall f [\forall g(\nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x) \implies \nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x)) \iff \exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)]$$

Item $a)$ however is similar to one of the conditionals in the biconditional above:

$$\forall f[\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x) \neq 0 \implies \forall g(\nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x) \implies \nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x))]$$

Here is the proof of this latter statement:

Let $f$ be any function.

Assume $\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x) \neq 0$.

Let us prove the contraposition of

$$\forall g(\nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x) \implies \nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x))$$

Which is

$$\forall g(\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x) \implies \exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x))$$

Let g be any function such that $\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x)$, and let this limit be $L$.

Here is the step that my question is about.

We can write $g = \frac{fg}{f}$

But why can we actually do this? What if f can take the value zero?

Since $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x) \neq 0$ then $\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} \frac{1}{f}$, and since $\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x)$ by assumption, we can assert that $\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} \frac{f(x)g(x)}{f(x)}$ (using a Theorem from the Spivak main text).

Hence $\lim\limits_{x \to 0} \frac{f(x)g(x)}{f(x)} = \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x)$ exists.

By conditional elimination, we can assert that $\forall g(\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x) \implies \exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x))$, which is the contraposition that we wanted to prove.

Because we assumed that $f$ was arbitrary, by conditional elimination we can assert the initial claim that:

$$\forall f[\exists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x) \neq 0 \implies \forall g(\nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} g(x) \implies \nexists \lim\limits_{x \to 0} f(x)g(x))]$$

Why can we write $g = \frac{fg}{f}$ for an arbitrary function $g$?

To take an example, if $f(x)=0$ and $g(x)=x$. Then if we try to write $g(x)=\frac{f(x)g(x)}{f(x)}$ we have $g(x)=\frac{0}{0}g(x)$.

What am I missing about this trick?

Best Answer

Your example at the end doesn't work because the limit has to be nonzero. And this is the crucial prerequisite. If the limit is nonzero, there is a neighborhood around $0$ where $f$ is nonzero. In that neighborhood the multiplicative inverse of $f$ exists and since we only care about arbitrarily small neighborhoods around $0$, we can use the inverse for evaluating the limit.

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