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In mathematics, summation is the addition of a sequence of numbers, called addends or summands; the result is their sum or total.Beside numbers, other types of values can be summed as well: functions, vectors, matrices, polynomials and, in general, elements of any type of mathematical objects on which an operation denoted "+" is defined.
Computation of the sum 2 + 5 + 8 + 11 + 14. When the sequence is reversed and added to itself term by term, the resulting sequence has a single repeated value in it, equal to the sum of the first and last numbers (2 + 14 = 16). Thus 16 × 5 = 80 is twice the sum.
The n-th harmonic number, which is the sum of the reciprocals of the first n positive integers, is never an integer except for the case n = 1. Moreover, József Kürschák proved in 1918 that the sum of the reciprocals of consecutive natural numbers (whether starting from 1 or not) is never an integer.
An arithmetico-geometric series is a sum of terms that are the elements of an arithmetico-geometric sequence. Arithmetico-geometric sequences and series arise in various applications, such as the computation of expected values in probability theory , especially in Bernoulli processes .
This list of mathematical series contains formulae for finite and infinite sums. It can be used in conjunction with other tools for evaluating sums. Here, is taken to have the value
For instance, rearranging the terms of the alternating harmonic series so that each positive term of the original series is followed by two negative terms of the original series rather than just one yields [34] + + + = + + + = + + + = (+ + +), which is times the original series, so it would have a sum of half of the natural logarithm of 2. By ...
By taking conjugates, the number p k (n) of partitions of n into exactly k parts is equal to the number of partitions of n in which the largest part has size k. The function p k (n) satisfies the recurrence p k (n) = p k (n − k) + p k−1 (n − 1) with initial values p 0 (0) = 1 and p k (n) = 0 if n ≤ 0 or k ≤ 0 and n and k are not both ...
It may be used to prove Nicomachus's theorem that the sum of the first cubes equals the square of the sum of the first positive integers. [2] Summation by parts is frequently used to prove Abel's theorem and Dirichlet's test.