Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/ia/paper-2/1a/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ia Paper 2 1A b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Collecting the shifted terms gives a second-order difference equation with coefficients , and . Substitute to obtain its characteristic equation of a linear recurrence:For real , the roots and general solution areIn the small-step regime, indeed for , the polynomial is positive at , negative at and positive for sufficiently large positive . Thus . The bounded solution of a second-order constant-coefficient recurrence discards the growing root, and fixes its remaining coefficient:The Taylor series establishes the displayed approximation to the root. Raising that approximation to the th power is a leading approximation, rather than a uniform relative approximation for arbitrarily large : its relative error is controlled when is small. For completeness, the degenerate values give when , and when .
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