Finitely many upper and lower peaks prevent convergence

ID: finitely-many-upper-and-lower-peaks-prevent-convergence

Suppose both and have only finitely many peaks of a sequence. Beyond some index , every term has a strictly larger later term and a strictly smaller later term. Starting from , construct one strictly increasing and one strictly decreasing monotone subsequence.
If the original sequence had limit of a sequence , both selected subsequences would tend to . The increasing one has a second term strictly above , so ; the decreasing one similarly forces . This contradiction proves nonconvergence. For example, has no peaks of a sequence in either sign and diverges.

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