Induction
I Am!
For years I used Proof By Induction, but never rea!y understood why it worked. This "ustrated me, and so I set out to discover the proof for proof by induction. The method we! use today comes "om Foersters Precalculus book, where sadly the entire topic is relegated to an appendix. Postulate: The Well Ordering Principle - If you have a non-empty set of positive integers then that set will have a least element. Recall the formula for the sum of the rst n natural numbers: 1 + 2 + ... + n = We will prove this formula is true using the Indirect Method, or Proof By Contradiction, you should remember this strategy from Geometry but I realize that was a long time ago... Step 1: Assume Not - We are going to assume that there is some number k for which the statement is not true... Hence:
It is our job now to contradict this statement. Alas, we know the statement is true if n = 1 , lets show this now by plugging in n = 1 into both sides of our formula:
So the statement we are trying to prove is either true for a number or false for a number, this is an either or situation. We can put these situations into two boxes.
Numbers for which the property is TRUE Numbers for which the property is FALSE
Lets populate these boxes, and give rationales for why each item goes in the chosen box...
So at this point we know the property is true for n = l 1 . Lets write this statement out...
Okay so lets reconsider the situation for n = l .
This is a contradiction. Which means that our Assume Not statement was false and our statement is indeed true for all the natural numbers. A proof by induction shortens this process into 3 easy steps. Step 1: Prove the statement is true for n = 1 or some other base case Step 2: Assume that the statement is true for n = k . Step 3: Use 1 and 2 to Prove the statement is true for n = k + 1 . The steps are easy but the proofs, surprise, surprise, can get tricky. Lets do some...
Problem Set
1. 2. Prove: 2 + 4 + 6 + ... + 2n = n 2 + n for all positive integers n. Prove:
k =1
n 2 (n + 1) 4
for all positive integers.
3.
Prove the formula for the sum of the rst n terms of a geometric sequence: Sn = recall that a1 is the rst term and r , r 1 is the common ratio.
a1 1 r n
(1 r )
4. 5. 6. 7.
Find a formula for the series, and then prove it by induction:
1 1 1 1 + + + ... + 1i2 2i3 3i4 n i( n + 1 )
Oh divisibility, prove that 9n 1 is divisible by 8 for all n1 where n is an integer. Prove that 32n 1 is a multiple of 8, for integers n 1 Using mathematical induction prove that
dn dx
x+ ( cos x ) = cos n
n for all positive integers. 2
