Formal and Informal Reasoning

Theorem: Suppose that (sn) is a sequence of positive terms and that the sequence of ratios ( converge to L. If L<1, then lim = 0. Formal Proof: Since L<1, there exists a real number c s.t. L<c<1. Let = c L so that > 0. Then there exists an integer N s.t. n > N implies that |
+1 +1

| <

Let k = N+1. Then for all n >k we have n-1 > N, so that +1 < + = + ( ) = It follows that, for all n > K, 0 < < 1 < 2 2 < <
Letting = , we obtain 0 < < for all n > k. Since 0 < c < 1, and the fact that if

|| < 1, then lim = 0 implies that lim = 0. Thus lim = 0. Informal reasoning: Since the ratio of the sequence is less than 1, that means each term is getting smaller. In fact we can get +1 by multiplying by that ratio. And since the ratio is less than one, we are guaranteed that the next term will be smaller than the one before it. And if we keep doing this an infinitely many times we will get zero.