Non-geometric infinite series (Part 12)

I conclude this series of posts with thoughts about infinite series which use reciprocals of positive integers. I offer this post for the enrichment of talented Precalculus students who have exhibited mastery of geometric series.

Geometric. As we’ve discussed at length, the series

converges and is in fact equal to .

Harmonic. Including the reciprocals of all positive integers is called a harmonic series:

As shown in the link to the MathWorld website, this series actually diverges, even though the terms get smaller and smaller.

So we’ve made an observation: if too many reciprocals are included, the series diverges. But if we take enough of them away, then we can still end up with a series that is infinite but converges.

Squares. Let’s now consider the reciprocals of perfect squares:

Clearly, we’ve taken away a lot of the terms of the harmonic series? Have we taken enough away so that the series converges? It turns out that the answer is yes. And the answer is precisely what you’d think it should be (not): . This is just another way that the circumference of a circle has an odd way of appearing in the most unexpected of places.

The proof that this series equals requires the clever use of Parseval’s theorem from Fourier analysis.

Fourth Powers. Let’s now turn to the reciprocals of fourth powers:

By the Direct Comparison Test and the series for reciprocals of squares, this series converges. Using Parseval’s theorem, it can be shown that the answer is .

Cubes. Now let’s investigate the reciprocals of cubes:

Again by the Direct Comparison Test and the series for reciprocals for squares, this series must converge. This sum is called Apéry’s constant.  However, and amazingly, no one knows what the answer is. Of course, a computer can be programmed to evaluate this series to as many decimal places as desired. According to Wikipedia, this sum was evaluated to over 100 billion decimal places in 2010. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one has figured out if there’s a simple way of writing the answer, like or .

So if you figure out a simple way to evaluate Apéry’s constant, feel free to call me collect.

The previous four series are example of Riemann’s zeta function, which is of central importance in number theory and is the focus of the celebrated Riemann Hypothesis, for which a solution is worth a cool $1 million.

Primes. Now let’s consider the reciprocals of primes:

As noted above, the harmonic series diverges, but if we remove enough terms from the harmonic series, then it’s possible to make an infinite series that converges. So the central question is, did we remove enough fractions (by taking away all of the composite denominators) so that the series converges?

Surprisingly, the answer is no: the sum of the reciprocals of the primes actually diverges. The proof actually requires a graduate-level class in analytic number theory.

By no means would I expect high school students to master all of the above facts. As noted above, the subject of this post is mostly for the enrichment of high school students who have mastered infinite geometric series.

That said, students who know the following facts from Precalculus will be well-served when they reach calculus and other university-level mathematics courses.

• They should either know the formula for an infinite geometric series or else be able to quickly derive it.
• They should know that not every infinite geometric series is geometric.
• They should know that not every infinite series converges.
• They should be familiar with the meaning of the terms converge and diverge.