Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

Department of Mathematics

MA 101 
Calculus

Mathematics-I

Topics Covered:

sequences.

Tutorial Sheet-2

Date: 05-Oct-2012

Monotonic sequences, Subsequences and Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem, Cauchy

1. For each of the following sets, check whether it is bounded below, bounded above. Also nd
supremum and inmum if they exist. Do they have maximum and minimum?
(a) S =

1
m

1
n

| m, n N

(b) S = 1 n1 | n N


(c) S = {sin(n) | n N}

(d) S = {x R | (x a)(x b)(x c) < 0}

with a < b < c.

2. Show that the supremum (and inmum) of a subset S R is unique, if it exists.

3. Let A be a nonempty subset of R and be a real number. If = sup A then show that a
for all a A and for any > 0 there is some a0 A such that < a0 .
What happens if is a maximum?
4. Let a, b R with a > 0. Show that there exists n N such that na > b. (This is equivalent
to the Archimedean property.)
5. For each of the following sequences determine whether it is monotonic. Also check whether it
is Cauchy.
(a)

n1
n+1

(b) Fibonacci sequence(c) an+1 =

2an 1 for various values of a1 .

6. Let (xn ) be a monotonically increasing sequence such that xn 1 for all n N. Can you nd
supremum of the set {xn | n N}?
7. Let (xn ) be a sequence of nonzero real numbers
such that it does not have any convergent

1
subsequence. Show that the sequence xn is convergent. What is the limit?
8. Show that every sequence has a monotonic subsequence.
9. Complete the proof of Cauchy

Convergence Criterion.

10. (Nested Interval Theorem) For each n N, let In = [an , bn ] be a non-empty bounded
interval of R such that
I1 I2 In In+1
T
and lim (an bn ) = 0. Show that
In contains exactly one point.
n

nN