Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/prelims/mathematics-ii/3/c/i/solution

In level , each group is
and there are such groups. The partial sums at completed groups are therefore zero. Inside a group of level , the only other partial sums are and . Every level contains finitely many terms, so the level containing the th term tends to infinity with . Thus all partial sums lie between zero and a bound tending to zero. By the squeeze theorem, the series has sum .
For the next two parts, label the positive occurrences of size by and the negative occurrences of size by . There are exactly occurrences in and in . Occurrences with equal value retain separate labels, so checking their counts verifies a bijection of terms.

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