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A problem involving power series

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11–17 of 17 posts

Re: A problem involving power series

#11

I think the user Av's answer (using Liouville's theorem) is correct, and a very simple argument, though it does use the fairly hefty machinery that goes into "a bounded analytic function is constant". EDIT: as tome kindly points out, e^x f(x) need not remain bounded as x goes to -infinity, or indeed any other direction of infinity on the complex plane.

Why? It's not bounded towards negative infinity.

Re: A problem involving power series

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you couldn't. Suppose $f(x)$ decays like $O(e^{-x})$ and $a_0$ is the constant term in its power series expansion. Then $g(x)=f(x)-a_0$ decays like $O(e^{-x}$ if and only if $f-g$ decays like $O(e^{-x})$, which in turn is equivalent to the condition that $a_0=0$. In other words, you either have $a_0=0$ in the first place (but then you have a circular argument, not a genuine proof), or $g(x)=f(x)-a$ not decaying l…

Thanks sorry for wasting your time.

If he helped you understand the problem, no time wasted at all!

Re: A problem involving power series

#13
post #11

I think the user Av's answer (using Liouville's theorem) is correct, and a very simple argument, though it does use the fairly hefty machinery that goes into "a bounded analytic function is constant". EDIT: as tome kindly points out, e^x f(x) need not remain bounded as x goes to -infinity, or indeed any other direction of infinity on the complex plane.

Why? It's not bounded towards negative infinity.

Hah, you're right. This is what I get for trying this five minutes after waking up.

Re: A problem involving power series

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just take the first sequence and set some element to 0 and you've got a new sequence that satisfies the property No, because if you have f(x) = e^(-x) + x^n / n! , then e^x f(x) is not bounded as x goes to infinity.

@cperciva do you ever miss math?

When I see puzzles like this, yes.

Re: A problem involving power series

#15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just take the first sequence and set some element to 0 and you've got a new sequence that satisfies the property No, because if you have f(x) = e^(-x) + x^n / n! , then e^x f(x) is not bounded as x goes to infinity.

@cperciva do you ever miss math?

context?
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