Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 ia Paper 1 9E b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
The arithmetic-geometric mean inequality givesBy induction these inequalities hold at every step, so is increasing and bounded above by , while is decreasing and bounded below by . The bounded monotone sequence theorem gives limits with . Taking limits in the arithmetic mean recurrence gives , whence . Thus both sequences converge to the same positive limit, the arithmetic-geometric mean iteration's limit. No elementary closed formula for that limit is needed.