Series of fractions

Algebra Level 5

3 4 + 1 2 + 7 16 + 11 32 + 18 64 + = ? \large{\frac{3}{4}+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{7}{16}+\frac{11}{32}+\frac{18}{64}+\ldots=\ ?}


The answer is 3.5.

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2 solutions

Tanishq Varshney
Jul 9, 2015

Note in the third step

3 2 + ( 4 4 3 4 ) + ( 7 8 4 8 ) + . . . \large{\frac{3}{2}+(\frac{4}{4}-\frac{3}{4})+(\frac{7}{8}-\frac{4}{8})+...}

How do you know that the series converges? I am afraid without that given proof your approach is incorrect, but at least incomplete.

Alisa Meier - 5 years, 11 months ago

We need first to prove that the series converges. For that we use the ratio test. But before that, first observe that the numerators are in a Fibonacci sequence with starting terms 3 and 4. Hence, if a and b are two consecutive numerators then b < a < 2 b b<a<2b . Let us denote the numerator sequence as ( F n ) n 1 { \left( { F }_{ n } \right) }_{ n\ge 1 } and let R n = F n + 1 F n , n N { R }_{ n }=\frac { { F }_{ n+1 } }{ { F }_{ n } } ,\forall n\in N . Then we have F n + 1 = F n + F n 1 { F }_{ n+1 }={ F }_{ n }+{ F }_{ n-1 }\\ and R n = 1 + 1 R n 1 { R }_{ n }=1+\frac { 1 }{ { R }_{ n-1 } } . We shall show that this ratio sequence goes to the Golden Ratio ϕ \phi given by: ϕ = 1 + 1 ϕ \phi =1+\frac { 1 }{ \phi } . We see that: R n ϕ = ( 1 + 1 R n 1 ) ( 1 + 1 ϕ ) = 1 R n 1 1 ϕ = ϕ R n 1 ϕ R n 1 ( 1 ϕ ) ϕ R n 1 ( 1 ϕ ) n 1 R 1 ϕ \left| { R }_{ n }-\phi \right| =\left| \left( 1+\frac { 1 }{ { R }_{ n-1 } } \right) -\left( 1+\frac { 1 }{ \phi } \right) \right| \\ =\left| \frac { 1 }{ { R }_{ n-1 } } -\frac { 1 }{ \phi } \right| \\ =\left| \frac { \phi -{ R }_{ n-1 } }{ \phi { R }_{ n-1 } } \right| \\ \le \left( \frac { 1 }{ \phi } \right) \left| \phi -{ R }_{ n-1 } \right|\\ \le { \left( \frac { 1 }{ \phi } \right) }^{ n-1 }\left| { R }_{ 1 }-\phi \right| Which clearly shows that ( R n ) ϕ \left( { R }_{ n } \right) \longrightarrow \phi Now we look at the given series and apply the ratio test on it. If we denote the n-th term of the series as x n { x }_{ n } then we find that x n + 1 x n = F n + 1 2 F n \frac { { x }_{ n+1 } }{ { x }_{ n } } =\frac { { F }_{ n+1 } }{ { 2F }_{ n } } . Now the RHS obviously has limit ϕ 2 1.618 2 0.809 < 1 \frac { \phi }{ 2 } \approx \frac { 1.618 }{ 2 } \approx 0.809<1 . Hence ratio test is satisfied and the series converges. The rest of the proof is just same as what Tanishq provided.

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