Series convergence study using big O?

81 Views Asked by At

Can someone explain why the following expression:

$\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} (-1)^{n}(\frac{1}{n})(\frac{\frac{7}{12}+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}})}{-\frac{1}{6}+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}})})$

can be rewritten as:

$\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} (-1)^{n}(\frac{1}{n})(\frac{-7}{2}+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}}))(1+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}}))$

And why we are allowed to split this last expression of the series into a convergent part and an absolutely convergent one?

Still trying to wrap my head around big O notation. Thanks in advance.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

One may recall that, as $x \to 0$, by the Taylor series expansion we have $$ \frac1{1-x}=1+x+O(x^2) $$ giving, as $n \to \infty$, $$ \frac{1}{-\frac{1}{6}+O(\frac{1}{n^2})}=(-6)\times\frac{1}{1-O(\frac{1}{n^2})}=(-6)\times\left( 1+O\left(\frac{1}{n^2}\right)\right) $$ and $$ \frac{\frac{7}{12}+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}})}{-\frac{1}{6}+O(\frac{1}{n^{2}})}=\left(\frac{7}{12}+O\left(\frac{1}{n^{2}}\right)\right)\times(-6)\times\left( 1+O\left(\frac{1}{n^2}\right)\right)=-\frac72+O\left(\frac{1}{n^2}\right) $$ as wanted.

The inital series converges being the sum of two convergent series.