So I saw the limit limn→∞e−n∑nk=0nkk! here the other day:
and when I saw it, I right away thought the answer is 1 because I thought limn→∞∑nk=0nkk!=limn→∞en given that ex=limn→∞∑nk=0xkk! and so the result would be limn→∞e−nen=1 but the result is 12, found using methods that I'm not familiar with.
Could someone please explain why my method is wrong?
Thank you so much in advance!
Answer
What you're doing is taking the identity
limn→∞n∑k=0xkk!=ex
and plugging in x=n to obtain the (false) statement
limn→∞n∑k=0nkk!=en.
Why is (2) false? Setting x=n in (1) is illegal because the n in (1) is busy being used as the label for the nth term in your sequence; plugging x=n confuses x with n and changes the nature of the expression you're studying. To see why (2) makes no sense, notice that the LHS of (2) should no longer depend on n when you've passed to the limit, so the RHS should not depend on n either. For more examples of what can go wrong, try setting x=n in the following identities, which are valid for all x:
limn→∞xn=0
and
limn→∞(1+xn)n=ex
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