The first time I was legitimately introduced to infinity was in high school. I was probably introduced to the idea of infinity earlier but I can’t recall any memory of it. When I was in my senior year of high school I took a calculus class just to prepare myself for college, just so I don’t go in to college without being familiar with any college level math. I was seventeen years old when I was introduced to infinity. My calculus teacher eventually taught us what infinity was and at first I remembered being frustrated about it.
Throughout my whole life I was surrounded by numbers, plugging in numbers, multiplying numbers, dividing numbers to suddenly plugging in a symbol. Well naturally to me I thought of infinity as more of a symbol than an actual number. To be quite honest I didn’t completely understand why we had to incorporate infinity or take the limits as x approaches infinity, it was just easy to get lost, which I unfortunately did. However later on in the semester I realized that plugging in infinity or taking the limit as x approaches infinity made sense and helps us find how a function will end up without actually plugging in all numbers.
Infinity makes the whole problem easier and I have come to enjoy problems dealing with infinity. Although I still feel that infinity is definitely one of the more complex ideas to understand, I find it the most interesting. We are able to plug in infinity and find an answer to a function that would otherwise would be impossible to get which is fascinating for someone who is new to infinity. Infinity is one of the more known symbols of calculus and it is one of the few that makes calculus engaging.
I agree, infinity is definitely a abstruse concept. I see infinite as comprising of everything, large or small. In mathematics, it is nothing more than a mere symbol.
You enjoy problems with infinity? That’s more than I can say for myself, I do find it interesting to ponder though.
Ironic how we encapsulate a never ending sequence of numbers into one symbol, no?