- #1
bowma166
- 30
- 0
Today, my professor said something like "The series 1 + -1 + 1 + -1 and so on is defined to be one half... but let's not go into that." and then didn't feel like explaining when people asked him why. I have no idea why that would be true...
It seems like a similar case might be
[tex]\int_{0}^{\infty}\sin x\,\textrm{d}x[/tex]
but that isn't defined to be one half or zero or anything at all.
So why oh why is this true?
[tex]\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\left(-1\right)^{n}=\frac{1}{2}[/tex]
It seems like a similar case might be
[tex]\int_{0}^{\infty}\sin x\,\textrm{d}x[/tex]
but that isn't defined to be one half or zero or anything at all.
So why oh why is this true?
[tex]\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\left(-1\right)^{n}=\frac{1}{2}[/tex]