Appendix: Accelerating convergence for other series

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Appendix: Accelerating convergence for other series


We can easily play the same game with the other series mentioned in this article. For example take the Gregory/Leibnitz series. There is a subtlety with this case as this is an {\em alternating series} which, as you add it up, takes values which oscillate above and below the value of π/4. To avoid this we will define the sum Tn by Tn=113+1514n1+14n+1. This sum is always slightly greater than π/4. Then Tn=Tn114n1+14n+1=Tn1216n21. As before we will assume that TnT and that T=Tn+A0n+A1n2+A2n3+. Comparing the two expressions for Tn and Tn1 we get 216n21=A0(1n1(n1))+A1(1n21(n1)2)+A2(1n31(n1)3)+ Again, as before, we can find the values of the terms An by expanding out each of these fractions and comparing powers of 1/nk when n is large. This is slightly more complicated than last time an we must use the result that for large values of n 216n21=18n2(1+116n2+1256n4+.). Doing this we find that A0=18,A1=116,A2=3128,A3=1256 so that T=Tn18n+116n23128n3+1256n4 As before we will compare the approximations to the sum given by Tn and by the corrections to T given by Pn=Tn18n, Qn=Tn18n+116n2, and Rn=Tn18n+116n23128n3+1256n4. Unknown environment 'center' Again if we compare these values to the true value of π/4=0.785398163397448 then we see excellent agreement, with real economy of effort. In fact 4×R10=3.141592594777596 which is a far better estimate for π than the one that we obtained earlier by adding up 100 terms {\em of the same series}.

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