DivineNathicana Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Greetings. Alright, if anyone's bored enough to be on-line right now, what is the following simplified and how do you get it? (1-1/2)(1-1/3)(1-1/4)(1-1/5)...(1-1/n) Thanks for any help, - Alisa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 the answer is 1/n, and it can be obtained as follows: rewrite your equation as:(1/2)*(2/3)*(3/4)*...*((n-2)/(n-1))*((n-1)/n) if you look at the last term, you see that the two (n-1) terms cancel each other. It can be easily seen that this works for all terms, except the first 1 and the last n, so your left with 1/n Bo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DivineNathicana Posted December 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Yeah, thanks Bo. I was doing this yesterday (or rather today) around 2 A.M. in the morning, so the thinking was pretty slow, but I got it right! Yay! hahaha Thanks again, - Alisa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 no problem, just doing my job :wink: What did you need the result for? Bo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DivineNathicana Posted December 8, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2004 An arbitrary assignment from my rather odd math teacher required that I do it... And granted, I forgot about it until around 2 A.M. (go me!), when my thinking cap was long-retired. = ) - Alisa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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