Sylvester's Sequence - Uniqueness of Quickly Growing Series With Rational Sums

Uniqueness of Quickly Growing Series With Rational Sums

As Sylvester himself observed, Sylvester's sequence seems to be unique in having such quickly growing values, while simultaneously having a series of reciprocals that converges to a rational number.

To make this more precise, it follows from results of Badea (1993) that, if a sequence of integers grows quickly enough that

and if the series

converges to a rational number A, then, for all n after some point, this sequence must be defined by the same recurrence

that can be used to define Sylvester's sequence.

Erdős (1980) conjectured that, in results of this type, the inequality bounding the growth of the sequence could be replaced by a weaker condition,

Badea (1995) surveys progress related to this conjecture; see also Brown (1979).

Read more about this topic:  Sylvester's Sequence

Famous quotes containing the words uniqueness of, uniqueness, quickly, growing, series, rational and/or sums:

    Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    Somehow we have been taught to believe that the experiences of girls and women are not important in the study and understanding of human behavior. If we know men, then we know all of humankind. These prevalent cultural attitudes totally deny the uniqueness of the female experience, limiting the development of girls and women and depriving a needy world of the gifts, talents, and resources our daughters have to offer.
    Jeanne Elium (20th century)

    The time passes so quickly during these full and active middle years that most people arrive at the end of middle age and the beginning of later maturity with surprise and a sense of having finished the journey while they were still preparing to commence it.
    Robert Havighurst (20th century)

    Listening to learn isn’t about giving advice—at least not until asked—but about trying to understand exactly what someone means, how it is that someone looks at and feels about her particular situation.... Listening to learn from a daughter in adolescence, conspiring with her thoughts and feelings, keeps a mother in touch with a daughter’s growing and changing self.
    Elizabeth Debold (20th century)

    There is in every either-or a certain naivete which may well befit the evaluator, but ill- becomes the thinker, for whom opposites dissolve in series of transitions.
    Robert Musil (1880–1942)

    ...if we would be and do all that as a rational being we should desire, we must resolve to govern ourselves; we must seek diversity of interests; dread to be without an object and without mental occupation; and try to balance work for the body and work for the mind.
    Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)

    If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
    Jewish proverb, quoted in Claud Cockburn, Cockburn Sums Up, epigraph (1981)