Wednesday, 30 April 2014

sequences and series - What is the exact value of sumlimitsx=1frac1xx?



On the internet I found an evaluation of the integral 10xxdx which results in x=11xx.


Seeing this graphically I found that the sum does seem to converge to approximately 1.291. So as it converges shouldn't we be able to find its exact value? Can someone please tell me what this value is or how I may be able to find it?



Edit:




While searching about this I came across Sophomore's Dream and this question which is quite interesting but none of them can quite give a closed value (in terms of known constants like π, ϕ or e). So does x=11xx or 10xxdx not have such a value? Is it irrational? So many questions.


Answer



The most you can say/prove is that the integral and the series are equal (easy to prove), and that the integral has no elementary anti-derivative (hard to prove, but there's one if you know some Galois theory). There's no known closed form for this value. It's not known whether it's rational/irrational.


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