Why are ∞, -∞, and NaN all called undefined?

I know that Desmos supports , -∞, and NaN as three different things – after all, {|x| = ∞: sign(x), {x = x: 0, 2}} will return 0 for normal numbers, 1 for , -1 for -∞, and 2 for NaN (such as 0/0).
In that case, why does Desmos label them all as undefined if there’s more meaning than that?
Surely it’s not difficult to differentiate them (after all, I just did), so why do they slap the label of undefined on any non-normal number?

A “defined” value would be finite, which those three do not fall into. There are after all different sizes of infinity. I’m not sure what use case you’re looking for. I think you’re seeing “undefined” because it’s not going to be a value that is really usable in a calculation. Your question is perhaps better suited for support.desmos.com which exclusively handles the Desmos calculator.

1 Like

Ah, I see. I was wondering this because I was making a floating-point test (floating-point numbers with custom amounts of bits).
When I told the calculator to display ∞, it showed undefined unless I set it to specifically show \infty instead of a variable I assigned infinity.
Perhaps once I finish polishing out all the bugs (having 1 or 0 bits in a category messes up the click function, so the bits aren’t flipping), I will post it here under a new “display” post.
Thank you, and have a good day.

Have you been on the /r/desmos subreddit? Might be a good community for what you’re into.

1 Like

I can’t, sorry. I have limited access to the internet due to using an organization-owned laptop. If I could get my home computer to work again, I would check it out. Thanks for the advice, though!

No need to be sorry. Just trying to direct you to what would probably be better support. support.desmos.com is also where calculator-related issues are handled, though it’s not a forum and may not meet your needs.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.