A useful Geometric Series formula

$ \sum_{n = M}^N \alpha^n = \frac{\alpha^M - \alpha^{N-1}}{(1 - \alpha)} $

  • What if $ \alpha=1 $????
  • For what values of M and N does this formula hold? Can they both be negative? Does N need to be greater than M?

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More on geometric series

Alumni Liaison

Ph.D. on Applied Mathematics in Aug 2007. Involved on applications of image super-resolution to electron microscopy

Francisco Blanco-Silva