Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A major problem was Euler's idea that any divergent series should have a natural sum, without first defining what is meant by the sum of a divergent series. Augustin-Louis Cauchy eventually gave a rigorous definition of the sum of a (convergent) series, and for some time after this, divergent series were mostly excluded from mathematics.
Euler had already become famous for finding the values of these functions at positive even integers (including the Basel problem), and he was attempting to find the values at the positive odd integers (including Apéry's constant) as well, a problem that remains elusive today.
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
While the partial sums of the reciprocals of the primes eventually exceed any integer value, they never equal an integer. One proof [6] is by induction: The first partial sum is 1 / 2 , which has the form odd / even . If the n th partial sum (for n ≥ 1) has the form odd / even , then the (n + 1) st sum is
Because it is a divergent series, it should be interpreted as a formal sum, an abstract mathematical expression combining the unit fractions, rather than as something that can be evaluated to a numeric value. There are many different proofs of the divergence of the harmonic series, surveyed in a 2006 paper by S. J. Kifowit and T. A. Stamps. [13]
In the mathematics of convergent and divergent series, Euler summation is a summation method. That is, it is a method for assigning a value to a series, different from the conventional method of taking limits of partial sums. Given a series Σa n, if its Euler transform converges to a sum, then that sum is called the Euler sum of the original ...
Briefly, if one expresses a partial sum of this series as a function of the penultimate term, one obtains either 4m + 1 / 3 or −4n + 1 / 3 . The mean of these values is 2 m − 2 n + 1 / 3 , and assuming that m = n at infinity yields 1 / 3 as the value of the series.
The sum of the series is approximately equal to 1.644934. [3] The Basel problem asks for the exact sum of this series (in closed form), as well as a proof that this sum is correct. Euler found the exact sum to be / and announced this discovery in 1735. His arguments were based on manipulations that were not justified at the time, although he ...