Simple Stirling: Proving Increasing Continuous Function on [1, inf)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Monochrome
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Stirling
Monochrome
Messages
11
Reaction score
0

Homework Statement



f(1)+f(2)...+f(n-1) =< \int_{0}^{n} f(x) dx =< f(2) +f(3)+...+f(n)

is increasing and continuous on [1, inf)
I'm meat to prove the above, the idea I had was to use the trapezium rule to get an approximation of the integral, but since f''(x) can be either negative or positive I'm stuck as to how to do that. Also I'm in a first year course and I haven't yet learned about Bernoulli numbers or the like, which is what came up when I was looking around for this problem.

Edit: Would using left and right Riemann sums solve this? I can get the inequality but does increasing in this case mean non-decreasing?
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Are you sure that the integral isn't from 1 to n?

I'd be inclined to start by trying to show that if f(x) is increasing, then:
1 \times f(n) \leq \integral_{n}{n+1} f(n) \leq 1 \times f(n+1)

The sums do correspond to left and right Riemann sums, but that's not going to be part of the proof unless you have a specific theorem about Riemann sums and increasing functions available.
 
There are two things I don't understand about this problem. First, when finding the nth root of a number, there should in theory be n solutions. However, the formula produces n+1 roots. Here is how. The first root is simply ##\left(r\right)^{\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)}##. Then you multiply this first root by n additional expressions given by the formula, as you go through k=0,1,...n-1. So you end up with n+1 roots, which cannot be correct. Let me illustrate what I mean. For this...
Back
Top