In mathematics, an asymptotic formula for a quantity (function or expression) depending on natural numbers, or on a variable taking real numbers as values, is a function of natural numbers, or of a real variable, whose values are nearly equal to the values of the former when both are evaluated for the same large values of the variable. An asymptotic formula for a quantity is a function which is asymptotically equivalent to the former.
More generally, an asymptotic formula is "a statement of equality between two functions which is not a true equality but which means the ratio of the two functions approaches 1 as the variable approaches some value, usually infinity".
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Famous quotes containing the word formula:
“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.”
—Pierre Simon De Laplace (1749–1827)