linear linear linear

The composition of two functions, \(F\) and \(G\), is a new function symbolized by \(F \circ G\). A hollow circle hovers between the two function names.

The order matters. Generally speaking, \(F \circ G \ne G \circ F\). Composition is not commutative.

Linear Composition

In this section, we will explore the composition of linear functions.

Let \(A(x) = a_1 \cdot x + a_0\) be a linear function with \(\mathbb {R}\) as its domain.
Let \(B(w) = b_1 \cdot w + b_0\) be a linear function with \(\mathbb {R}\) as its domain.

Then \(A \circ B\) is a new function. What is its formula?

To keep everything separate, let’s use \(v\) as the variable for the formula of \(A \circ B\).

\begin{align*} (A \circ B)(v) & = A(B(v)) \\ & = A(b_1 \cdot v + b_0) \\ & = a_1 \cdot (b_1 \cdot v + b_0) + a_0 \\ & = a_1 \cdot b_1 \cdot v + a_1 \cdot b_0 + a_0 \\ & = (a_1 \cdot b_1) v + (a_1 \cdot b_0 + a_0) \end{align*}

\(\blacktriangleright \) The composition of two linear functions is again a linear function.

Restricted Domains

Let’s restrict the domains of our linear functions.

\[ T(v) = -v+3 \, \text { with domain } \, [1,7) \]

Graph of \(y = T(v)\).

\[ g(x) = \frac {7}{4}x-8 \, \text { with domain } \, (2,8) \]

Let’s create the composition \(T \circ g = T(g)\).

This means the range of \(g\) needs to be inside the domain of \(T\). But as the chart below shows, there are numbers in the range of \(g\) that are not in the domain of \(T\).

For instance, \(0\) is in the range of \(g\), but not in the domain of \(T\).

Therefore, we need to remove the numbers in the domain of \(g\), whose function value is \(0\).

Like, \(-\frac {32}{7}\) is in the domain of \(g\), and \(g\left (-\frac {32}{7}\right ) = 0\). So, \(-\frac {32}{7}\) has to be removed from the domain of \(g\).

There are more numbers in the domain of \(g\), where the function value of \(g\) is not in the domain of \(T\). We need to remove these numbers from the domain of \(T \circ g\).

What part of the range of \(g\) can we use?

Now we need to take our restricted domain of \(T\), \([1, 6)\), and determine the restricted range.

  • \(T(1) = -1+3 = 2\), included
  • \(T(6) = -6+3 = -3\), excluded

What do we have?

Graph of \(y = T(g(c))\).

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more examples can be found by following this link
More Examples of Piecewise Composition

2025-01-07 00:31:33