How Do I Find x n x_n First?

Calculus Level 3

Let { x n } \{x_n\} be a sequence such that x 1 = 1 , x n x n + 1 = 2 n x_1=1,\ x_nx_{n+1}=2n for n 1 n\ge 1 .

Find lim n x n + 1 x n n . \displaystyle \lim_{n\to\infty} \dfrac{|x_{n+1}-x_n|}{\sqrt{n}}.


The answer is 0.342.

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2 solutions

Abhishek Sinha
Mar 26, 2016

We have x n x n + 1 = 2 n x_nx_{n+1}=2n and x n + 1 x n + 2 = 2 ( n + 1 ) x_{n+1}x_{n+2}=2(n+1) . Dividing the second by the first, we obtain x n + 2 x n = n + 1 n \frac{x_{n+2}}{x_{n}}=\frac{n+1}{n} Using the above and the given initial condition and iterating n \sim n times, we have x 2 n + 1 = 2 2 n ( 2 n n ) , x 2 n = 4 n ( 2 n n ) 2 2 n . x_{2n+1}=\frac{2^{2n}}{\binom{2n}{n}}, x_{2n}=\frac{4n\binom{2n}{n}}{2^{2n}}. Using Stirling's formula , we have the following asymptotic relation ( 2 n n ) 2 2 n n π \binom{2n}{n}\asymp \frac{2^{2n}}{\sqrt{n\pi}} Substituting it, we obtain lim n x 2 n + 1 x 2 n 2 n = 1 2 ( π 1 π ) 0.342 \lim_{n\to \infty}\frac{|x_{2n+1}-x_{2n}|}{\sqrt{2n}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\sqrt{\pi}-\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi}})\approx 0.342

Used the exact same approach. Nice answer.

Samrat Mukhopadhyay - 4 years, 11 months ago
Bert Seegmiller
Nov 4, 2018

I used a spreadsheet to observe the behavior of the numbers and the equation. The limit converged fairly slowly, so I averaged two adjacent values of the equation and came out with . 342 \boxed{.342} .

@Abhishek Sinha If I'm not mistaken, a factor 4 is missing in the last line;

4 π \ldots-\frac{\fbox{4}}{\sqrt{\pi}}\ldots

Anyway, great solution!

Carsten Meyer - 2 years, 3 months ago

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