User blog comment:Bigtymerxg4/Existentialism/@comment-Athrun Feya-20091021111147

Yes, i should have said tended to (+/-) infinity but I thought that concept was a little too hard for some users to grasp. Panic that only doesnt work because it is an improper fraction, rearranging into a proper fraction is really one of the conditions which you should satisfy before even bothering to divide by 0 (of course x+3 doesnt tend to infinity, lol?). With respect to the control systems I deal with (which are generally in the form (s+d)/(s+a)(s+b)(s+c)), poles represent when part of the denominator is 0 (essentially division by 0), the function is said to be infinity and this is always the case (but hey, i only do engineering science at oxford, what do I know)