Convince me: limit of sum of a constant is infinity
So I have a problem and have simplified the part I am confused about below.
If $\sum_{m=1}^{\infty }c < \infty$ and $0 \leq c \leq 1$, then $lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \sum_{m=n}^{\infty }c= 0$ which implies $c=0$.
My general intuition says that because the sum of infinitely many non-negative c's is less than infinity, than $c=0$ because the sum of an infinitely many positive numbers will always be infinity.
The limit is where I am confused. I feel like the limit will always be $0$ even if $c>0$. It also feels like the limit is not necessary to show $c=0$.
$\endgroup$ 53 Answers
$\begingroup$If $c>0$ then $\sum_{i=1}^{\infty }c= \lim_{n\to \infty } \sum_{i=1}^{n}c=\lim_{n\to \infty }nc =\infty $
If c=$0$ then $\sum_{i=1}^{\infty }c=0 $
If $c<0 $then $\sum_{i=1}^{\infty }c =-\infty $
$\endgroup$ 1 $\begingroup$Suppose that every day I go to the bank and deposit the same amount of money: $c$ dollars.
I want to buy a gold chain that costs $M$ dollars. Eventually, if I am diligent and keep depositing $c$ dollars every day, I will have enough to buy my gold chain, right? No matter how much $M$ is.
The only way this doesn't work is if the amount of dollars I am depositing every day is $0$.
$\endgroup$ 1 $\begingroup$Since your sum $$\sum _1^\infty C <\infty$$
We may apply the divergence test to conclude that $$\lim _ {n\to \infty}C=0.$$
Since C is a constant we have $$\lim _{n\to \infty }C =C.$$
Thus $C=0.$
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