# smooth functions or continuous

When we say a function is smooth? Is there any difference between smooth function and continuous function? If they are the same, why sometimes we say f is smooth and sometimes f is continuous? Please help me. Thanks.

• "smooth" means (at least) "continously differentiable". Sometimes more (even infinite number of) derivatives are required to be continuous. – njguliyev Aug 20 '13 at 16:59
• @njguliyev, not to nitpick but I think it's relatively common to call Lipschitz continuous ODEs "smooth" - being just smooth enough for existence and uniqueness of solutions. – alancalvitti Aug 20 '13 at 17:08

A function being smooth is actually a stronger case than a function being continuous. For a function to be continuous, the epsilon delta definition of continuity simply needs to hold, so there are no breaks or holes in the function (in the 2-d case). For a function to be smooth, it has to have continuous derivatives up to a certain order, say k. We say that function is $C^{k}$ smooth. An example of a continuous but not smooth function is the absolute value, which is continuous everywhere but not differentiable everywhere.

A smooth function is differentiable. Usually infinitely many times.

• ... or at least as often as we need it. – Hagen von Eitzen Aug 20 '13 at 17:14

Smooth implies continuous, but not the other way around. There are functions that are continuous everywhere, yet nowhere differentiable.

A smooth function can refer to a function that is infinitely differentiable. More generally, it refers to a function having continuous derivatives of up to a certain order specified in the text. This is a much stronger condition than a continuous function which may not even be once differentiable.

A smooth function is a function that has continuous derivatives up to some desired order over some domain. A function can therefore be said to be smooth over a restricted interval such as or . The number of continuous derivatives necessary for a function to be considered smooth depends on the problem at hand, and may vary from two to infinity. A function for which all orders of derivatives are continuous is called a C-infty-function.

Consider a sequence in $\mathbb{R}$ say $\{x_n\}_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$, which is continuous in $\mathbb{R}$. Usually we do not say it a smooth function.