Termwise differentiation of a power series

ID: termwise-differentiation-of-a-power-series

Termwise differentiation of a power series by Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-25
Inside its radius of convergence, a power series can be differentiated term by term:
The differentiated series has the same radius of convergence. The conclusion concerns the interior, including uniform convergence on smaller closed disks; it does not assert that differentiated boundary series converge wherever the original did. For example, converges conditionally at , but its differentiated series does not.
Applied to the geometric series, it gives the useful identity
Differentiation turns the plain coefficients into integer weights. This is one way generating functions translate a weighted counting question into an operation on a known series. A proof controls the original and differentiated tails on smaller disks; the Weierstrass M-test provides the needed uniform bounds. See Lebl, Basic Analysis, §11.3: power-series differentiation and analyticity.

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