In mathematics, the limit of a sequence is the value that the terms of a sequence "tend to", and is often denoted using the lim {\displaystyle \lim } symbol (e.g., lim n → ∞ a n {\displaystyle \lim _{n\to \infty }a_{n}} ). If such a limit exists and is finite, the sequence is called convergent. A sequence that does not converge is said to be divergent. The limit of a sequence is said to be the fundamental notion on which the whole of mathematical analysis ultimately rests. Limits can be defined in any metric or topological space, but are usually first encountered in the real numbers.
History The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea is famous for formulating paradoxes that involve limiting processes. Leucippus, Democritus, Antiphon, Eudoxus, and Archimedes developed the method of exhaustion, which uses an infinite sequence of approximations to determine an area or a volume. Archimedes succeeded in summing what is now called a geometric series in his Quadrature of the Parabola, computing the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line. Grégoire de Saint-Vincent gave the first definition of limit (terminus) of a geometric series in his work Opus Geometricum (1647): "The terminus of a progression is the end of the series, which none progression can reach, even not if she is continued in infinity, but which she can approach nearer than a given segment." Pietro Mengoli anticipated the modern idea of limit of a sequence with his study of quasi-proportions in Geometriae speciosae elementa (1659). He used the term quasi-infinite for unbounded and quasi-null for vanishing. Newton dealt with series in his works on Analysis with infinite series (written in 1669, circulated in manuscript, published in 1711), Method of fluxions and infinite series (written in 1671, published in English translation in 1736, Latin original published much later) and Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum (written in 1693, published in 1704 as an Appendix to his Optiks). In the latter work, Newton considers the binomial expansion of ( x + o ) n {\textstyle (x+o)^{n}} , which he then linearizes by taking the limit as o {\textstyle o} tends to 0 {\textstyle 0} . In the 18th century, mathematicians such as Euler succeeded in summing some divergent series by stopping at the right moment; they did not much care whether a limit existed, as long as it could be calculated. At the end of the century, Lagrange in his Théorie des fonctions analytiques (1797) opined that the lack of rigour precluded further development in calculus. Gauss in his study of hypergeometric series (1813) for the first time rigorously investigated the conditions under which a series converged to a limit. The modern definition of a limit (for any ε {\textstyle \varepsilon } there exists an index N {\textstyle N} so that ...) was given by Bernard Bolzano (Der binomische Lehrsatz, Prague 1816, which was little noticed at the time), and by Karl Weierstrass in the 1870s.
Real numbers
In the real numbers, a number L {\displaystyle L} is the limit of the sequence ( x n ) {\displaystyle (x_{n})} , if the numbers in the sequence become closer and closer to L {\displaystyle L} , and not to any other number.
Examples
Examples of limit of a sequence in real numbers are the following:
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