Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics

MAM1020F 2014
Sums and Sigma notation
Sums of various kinds crop up frequently in Mathematics. At school you have come
across arithmetic and geometric series, and when we started talking about definite inte-
grals, we used sums as well. It becomes a bit tedious to write out sums such as
1 1 1 1
1+ + + + ...+
2 4 8 256
or  2  2
1 1 2 1  n 2 1
1+ + 1+ + ...+ 1+
n n n n n n
in full. There is a special shorthand, called sigma notation, that we can use to cut down
on the amount of writing we have to do when we write sums. The “sigma” stands for
the Greek letter Σ which lies at the heart of this shorthand. To explain the basic idea
of this notation, let’s suppose we have n numbers to add (where n is a positive integer).
It is convenient to denote these numbers all by the same letter, but to use subscripts to
distinguish between them. If we use the letter a, for example, the n numbers would be
denoted by
a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . , an .
We want to have a shorthand for the sum

a1 + a2 + a3 + · · · + an .

We write down the letter Σ to indicate that we are talking about a sum (Σ is the “S”
of the Greek alphabet), and next to it we write ak to indicate that we are going to add
numbers of the type ak . This on its own is not yet good enough; we still have to say that
we want to start with a1 and end with an . This means that we want to add terms of the
form ak , stating with k = 1 and increasing k by one at a time till we get to k = n. To
indicate that we put k = 1 below the Σ and an n above the Σ, and it’s taken for granted
that k is increased by one at a time. To summarize, we can replace the sum

a1 + a2 + a3 + · · · + an

by
n
X
ak .
k=1

There is some terminology in common use in connection with sums of this type: the
expression ak is called the general term of the sum (it can be any expression containing k)
and the variable k is called the running index or dummy variable. The dummy variable
could be replaced by any other letter (except n and a, which are already being used for
something else) without changing the meaning of the shorthand. This means, for example,
that n n n n
X X X X
ak = aj = ai = ar = a1 + a2 + . . . + an .
k=1 j=1 i=1 r=1

1
Example 1

(a)
5
X
ak = a1 + a2 + a3 + a4 + a5
k=1

(b)
7  i  2  3  7
X 1 1 1 1 1
= + + + ...+
i=1
3 3 3 3 3

(c)
n  2  2  2
X j 1 1 1 2 1  n 2 1
1+ = 1+ + 1+ + ...+ 1 +
j=1
n n n n n n n n

There is no reason why the first value of the running index should be 1; we may want
to start with a different value. This is easily handled, as the following examples show.

Example 2

(a)
23
X
a3 + a4 + a5 + . . . + a23 = ar
r=3

(b)
n−1  2  2  2
X j 1 21 1 1 n−1 1
1+ = (1) + 1 + + ...+ 1 +
j=0
n n n n n n n

The same sum can be written in many different ways using sigma notation. So, for
example
X21 20
X 19
X
a2i+1 = a2k+3 = a2s+5 = a3 + a5 + a7 + . . . + a43 .
i=1 k=0 s=−1

Note that although the running index still increases by one at a time, the subscripts now
increase by two at a time, because of the form of the subscript.

When dealing with sums expressed in sigma notation, sums of the form
n
X
c
i=1

come up quite naturally. This is just a rather strange way of writing the sum of n c’s,
i.e.
XN
c = c + c + c + · · · + c (n terms) = nc.
i=1

2
 There are two familiar results from elementary algebra that are very useful when
working with sums but look a bit unfamiliar when expressed in sigma notation.

Rule 1: n n
X X
cai = c ai
i=1 i=1

is just
ca1 + ca2 + · · · + can = c(a1 + a2 + · · · + an ).

Rule 2: n n n
X X X
(ai + bi ) = ai + bi
i=1 i=1 i=1

is just

(a1 + b1 ) + (a2 + b2 ) + · · · + (an + bn ) = (a1 + a2 + · · · + an ) + (b1 + b2 + · · · + bn ).

Some useful formulae for sums

At school you learnt formulae for the sums of arithmetic and geometric series (or
progressions). These can now be expressed quite concisely in sigma notation.

1. The sum of an arithmetic progression with first term a, common difference d and n
terms is given by
n
X n
(a + (k − 1)d) = (2a + (n − 1)d)
k=1
2
On the left we have the sum in sigma notation; on the right is the formula for
calculating the sum. An important special case is the sum of the first n positive
integers; for this just take a = 1 and d = 1:
n
X n(n + 1)
k=
k=1
2

2. The sum of an geometric progression with first term a, common ratio r 6= 1 and n
terms is given by
n−1
X a(1 − r n )
ar i =
i=0
1−r

It is important to note that not every sum is either an arithmetic or geometric

3
 Sums that can be written in the form
Xn
(bk+1 − bk )
k=1

(i.e. every term in this sum is in fact the difference between two successive terms of some
sequence b1 , b2 , . . . , bn+1 ) are called telescoping sums. The reason for this can be seen
when we write the sum out in full:
Xn
(bk+1 − bk ) = b2 − b1 + b3 − b2 + b4 − b3 + . . . + bn − bn−1 + bn+1 − bn = bn+1 − b1 .
k=1
We can sometimes find the value of a sum by first writing it as a telescoping sum. Once
you’ve done this, the rest is easy.

Example 3 It is not at all clear how we can find the sum ni=1 i2 . The trick is the
P
following: Note that (i + 1)3 − i3 = 3i2 + 3i + 1. If we sum the expression on the left hand
side, we get a telescoping sum:
Xn
((i + 1)3 − i3 ) = (n + 1)3 − 13 = n3 + 3n2 + 3n.
i=1
If we sum the expression on the right hand side, we get
Xn Xn Xn n
X
2 2
(3i + 3i + 1) = 3 i +3 i+ 1,
i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1
using the two rules above. The first term on the right now contains the sum we want to
find, and the second and third terms we can evaluate using the formulae given above:
n n
X
2
X n(n + 1)
(3i + 3i + 1) = 3 i2 + 3 + n.
i=1 i=1
2
Putting all this together, we get
n
X n(n + 1) n(n + 1)(2n + 1)
3 i2 = n3 + 3n2 + 3n − 3 −n=
i=1
2 2
after some algebra. Hence
n
X n(n + 1)(2n + 1)
i2 =
i=1
6

Appendix F of the textbook also contains futher examples of the use of sigma notation.

Exercises
n
X
1. Find a formula for k 3 by making use of the identity
k=1

k 4 − (k − 1)4 = 4k 3 − 6k 2 + 4k − 1
and using a telescoping sum.
n
X
2. Find k(k + 1).
k=1