Monday, August 27, 2018

inequality - Proving Alternating Harmonic Series with Mathematical Induction



I'm stuck on this mathematical induction inequality and am not sure about what to do with it.
Prove using the principle of mathematical induction that:
112+1314+15....+(1)n11n>0nZ+


I'm not even sure how to even start it properly due to the signs alternating. I was thinking that I should work it out for n=1 and then n=2. But then when it reaches the inductive steps, I have no idea of what to do.




Thanks a lot!!


Answer



O.K, first case n=2 which is 112>0 which is true.



Assume that its true for n=2k for k1 which is 112+1314++12k112k>0



We want to prove it for n=2(k+1) which is 112+1314++12k112k+12k+112k+2>0, by the assumption its true that the sum till 12k is bigger than 0 so we substitute by 0, so it becomes 0+12k112k>0 which is 12k1>12k which is clearly true. thus for all even cases the inequality holds true.(for odd cases we want that in order to get to even case we need to subtract some value and when reaching even case we know its bigger than 0).



So if we have a value that we subtract from it some smaller value and we still bigger than 0, so the initial values are certainly bigger than 0.




Which conclude the proof.


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