Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ia Paper 1 9C iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Group three consecutive terms. Their block sum isSince and for , we have . The comparison test for series and the preceding proof of convergence of show that converges absolutely.
This establishes convergence of the original partial sums at indices . Each intermediate partial sum differs from one of these by at most two of the original terms; those terms tend to zero. Thus all partial sums have the same limit of a sequence, which is the mechanism of convergence from fixed-length series blocks. The original series is not absolutely convergent, since its absolute-value series contains . Therefore the original series converges conditionally.