Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T03:23:31.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Suggested Rearrangement of the Book-Work on Some Elementary Series

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

Extract

In all the English text-books on Analytical Trigonometry, so far as I know, the power-series for cos x; is obtained as the limit, when n tends towards infinity, of the finite sum for cos x,

where and the number of terms is equal to the integer next greater than . The power-series for sin x is obtained similarly; the two series and the method of finding them being both due to Euler.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1904

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 85 note * It is perhaps worth while to enter a plea for the use of the phrase, from the very beginning, in dealing with limits. The phrases “the limit when n is ∞,” “the limit when n = ∞” can do nothing bnt harm.

page 85 note † Castle’s Manual of Practical Mathematics (Macmillan, 1903)Google Scholar; Lachlan, and Fletcher’s, Elements of Trigonometry (Arnold, 1904)Google Scholar. I refer to these as examples, merely; in many other respects both books strike me as good.

page 85 note ‡ I have found a little numerical calculation very useful in convincing the unbeliever that there is an assumption involved. Thus with n even, and , we find the product to be less than 1/103 when n = 10; less than 1/1010 for n=30; less than 1/1020 for n=50.

page 86 note * For the purpose of numerical calculation the second form is often more useful than the series.

page 87 note * The angle is taken (as usual in the Calculus) to lie between – and and π.

page 87 note † They also serve to show that the convergence to the limit is very slow, compared with that of the exponential series.

page 87 note ‡ Some of the results (perhaps all of them) are given as exercises in Prof. Gibson’s excellent Calculus; I had, however, obtained them independently before his book was published.

page 87 note § It is perhaps going too far at present to suggest that the theory of double limits and uniform convergence is essential for a professed mathematician in England; just as, for the present, it seems hopeless to expect even an elementary knowledge of the foundations of geometry from our “up-to-date” Euclids.

page 88 note * It may not be out of place to refer to the fact that the real difficulty in finding the infinite product is not to prove that x(1 – x 2/π 2), etc. are factors; but to prove that no factor of the form, eax is present. This remark is due to Stolz, but is not made in any of the English text-books.