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However, if the terms and their finite sums belong to a set that has limits, it may be possible to assign a value to a series, called the sum of the series. This value is the limit as tends to infinity of the finite sums of the first terms of the series if the limit exists.
An infinite series of any rational function of can be reduced to a finite series of polygamma functions, by use of partial fraction decomposition, [8] as explained here. This fact can also be applied to finite series of rational functions, allowing the result to be computed in constant time even when the series contains a large number of terms.
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.
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.
The n-th partial sum of the harmonic series, which is the sum of the reciprocals of the first n positive integers, diverges as n goes to infinity, albeit extremely slowly: The sum of the first 10 43 terms is less than 100 .
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. For instance, the sequence
In mathematics, a series is the sum of the terms of an infinite sequence of numbers. More precisely, an infinite sequence (,,, …) defines a series S that is denoted = + + + = =. The n th partial sum S n is the sum of the first n terms of the sequence; that is,
A summation method that is linear and stable cannot sum the series 1 + 2 + 3 + ⋯ to any finite value. (Stable means that adding a term at the beginning of the series increases the sum by the value of the added term.) This can be seen as follows. If + + + =, then adding 0 to both sides gives