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Asked by: Reinalda Egart
science space and astronomyWhat does the inverse of a function represent?
Furthermore, what does the inverse of a function mean?
An inverse function is a function that undoes the action of the another function. A function g is the inverse of a function f if whenever y=f(x) then x=g(y). In other words, applying f and then g is the same thing as doing nothing.
- First, replace f(x) with y .
- Replace every x with a y and replace every y with an x .
- Solve the equation from Step 2 for y .
- Replace y with f−1(x) f − 1 ( x ) .
- Verify your work by checking that (f∘f−1)(x)=x ( f ∘ f − 1 ) ( x ) = x and (f−1∘f)(x)=x ( f − 1 ∘ f ) ( x ) = x are both true.
Keeping this in consideration, why is it important to find the inverse of a function?
One 'physically significant' application of an inverse function is its ability to undo some physical process so that you can determine the input of said process. Let's say you have an observation y which is the output of a process defined by the function f(x) where x is the unknown input.
An inverse function is a function that will “undo” anything that the original function does. For example, we all have a way of tying our shoes, and how we tie our shoes could be called a function. The two mathematical operations that are taking place in the function f(x) are multiplication and subtraction.