The document discusses various concepts related to convergent and divergent sequences of real numbers including examples and proofs. It defines convergent and divergent sequences, bounded sequences, monotone sequences, subsequences, and proves key theorems about their properties.
The document discusses various concepts related to convergent and divergent sequences of real numbers including examples and proofs. It defines convergent and divergent sequences, bounded sequences, monotone sequences, subsequences, and proves key theorems about their properties.
The document discusses various concepts related to convergent and divergent sequences of real numbers including examples and proofs. It defines convergent and divergent sequences, bounded sequences, monotone sequences, subsequences, and proves key theorems about their properties.
The document discusses various concepts related to convergent and divergent sequences of real numbers including examples and proofs. It defines convergent and divergent sequences, bounded sequences, monotone sequences, subsequences, and proves key theorems about their properties.
The fact that we can go from a complicated rational function to one that works for our purposes (namely to prove the sequence converges to 0) is awesome.
Example 2 Consider the sequence xn = (−1)n . This sequence is divergent.
Proof : Let x ∈ R. We claim limn→∞ (−1)n 6= x. To prove this, we simply need find an epsilon that stops the sequence from converging. For instance, consider 0 = 12 . Then, for M ∈ N,
1 Thus, either |(−1)M − x| ≥ 2 or |(−1)M +1 − x| ≥ 21 . In either case, this shows that the limit cannot converge to x.
Theorem 3 If {xn } is convergent, then {xn } is bounded.
Before we start the proof, let’s first talk about the idea of the proof. Let = 1 such that |xn − x| < 1 for all n ≤ M for some M ∈ N. Then, there are finitely many elements not in the interval (x − 1, x + 1). We use this to our advantage. Proof : Suppose that limn→∞ xn = x. Thus, there exists an M ∈ N such that |xn − x| < 1 for all n ≥ M . Let
B = max{|x1 |, |x2 |, . . . , |xM −1 |, |x| + 1}.
If n < M , then |xn | ≤ B by construction. If n ≥ M , then
|xn | ≤ |xn − x| + |x| < 1 + |x| ≤ B.
1 Definition 4 (Monotone) A sequence {xn } is monotone increasing if ∀n ∈ N, xn ≤ xn+1 . A sequence {xn } is monotone decreasing if ∀n ∈ N, xn ≥ xn+1 . If {xn } is either monotone increasing or monotone decreasing, we say {xn } is monotone or monotonic.
Example 5 1 For example, xn = n is monotone, yn = − n1 is monotone increasing, and (−1)n is neither.
Theorem 6 Let {xn } be a monotone increasing sequence. Then, {xn } is convergent if and only if {xn } is bounded. Moreover, limn→∞ xn = sup{xn | n ∈ N}.
Proof : Firstly, we know that if {xn } is convergent then it is bounded by the previous theorem, Now assume that {xn } is bounded. Then, x := sup{xn | n ∈ N} exists in R by the lowest upper bound property of R. We now prove that lim xn = x. n→∞
Let > 0. Then, ∃M0 ∈ N such that
x − < xM0 < x
since x is the supremum of the set. Let M = M0 . Then, ∀n ≥ M , we have
x − < xM0 = xM ≤ xn ≤ x < x + .
Therefore, |xn | < |x + |. Therefore, xn → x.
Theorem 7 Let {xn } be a monotone decreasing function. Then, {xn } is convergent if and only if {xn } is bounded. Moreover, lim xn = inf{xn | n ∈ N} n→∞
The proof of this is similar to the previous theorem and is thus omitted.
Definition 8 (Subsequence) Informally, a subsequence is a sequence with entries coming from another given sequence. In other words, let {xn } be a sequence and let {nk } be a strictly increasing sequence of natural numbers. Then the sequence
{xnk }∞ k=1
is called a subsequence of {xn }.
Consider the sequence {xn } = n – in other words, the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . . Then, the following are subse-
