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Prof. Alekseenko: Problem #13 is a little bit tricky, so let me give some hints about the solution. The problem specifically directs you to use the Squeeze theorem. The difficult part is to come up with a correct estimate for the sequence.

Part (a) is not very hard. One can use the Bernoulli inequality. I will just indicate the basic steps and you will have to fill in the detail.

Step 1. Show that if $ a^n > b^n $ for some natural number $ n \, $ then $ a > b \, $. You can try to show it by a contradiction.

Step 2. Use a Bernoulli inequality to obtain the following: $ \left( 1+\frac{1}{n} \right)^{n^2} > 1 + n > n $

Conclude that $ 1+\frac{1}{n} > n^{\frac{1}{n^2}} $

Step 3. Use Step 1 again to conclude that $ 1 < n^{\frac{1}{n^2}} $

Step 4. Apply the squeeze theorem.

Part (b) is a bit trickier, however is not very hard. You will have to use some of the results in part (a), not not all of them.

Step 1. Notice that

$ 1 < (n!)^{\frac{1}{n^2}} = (1\cdot 2 \cdot \ldots \cdot n)^{\frac{1}{n^2}} $

$ < (n\cdot n \cdot \ldots \cdot n)^{\frac{1}{n^2}}= n^{\frac{1}{n}} $

Step 2. To develop an estimate for $ n^{\frac{1}{n}} $, Consider the following:

$ \left(1+\frac{1}{n}\right)^{n} = 1 + n\frac{1}{n}+\frac{n(n-1)}{2}\frac{1}{n^2}+\ldots+\frac{1}{n^{n}} $.

Now we notice that each term in the decomposition of the binomial is less than or equal to 1. Then,

$ \le 1+n < n $.

But then, again,

$ n^{\frac{1}{n}} < 1 + \frac{1}{n} $

And then you can pick it up from here.


Alumni Liaison

Correspondence Chess Grandmaster and Purdue Alumni

Prof. Dan Fleetwood