Sigma Percentile
JEE Main 2025 (January)
LEVELJEE Main

Animated Solution for Mathematics - Sequence and Series: The value of is equal to:

Select Answer:

Visualized Solution

Analyze the General Term

  • The general term of the series is
  • We need to find
  • Our strategy is to decompose into a form that allows for a telescoping sum.

Factoring the Numerator

  • Observe the product:
  • Expanding this gives:
  • Notice how close this is to our numerator!

Adjusting the Constant Term

  • Our numerator is
  • We can rewrite it as:
  • Substituting the factored form:

Splitting the General Term

  • Substitute the new numerator back into :
  • Split this into two separate fractions:

Simplifying the First Fraction

  • Focus on the first fraction:
  • Expand the denominator:
  • Notice the common terms in the numerator and denominator.

The Telescoping Form of

  • Cancel the common terms:
  • The first fraction simplifies to:
  • The simplified general term is:

Setting up the Summation

  • We need to find the sum of the first terms:
  • Substitute our simplified :
  • We can split this into two separate sums.

Expanding the Series

  • First part of the sum:
  • Second part of the sum:

Cancellation of Terms

  • Notice the terms that appear in both parts.
  • The terms from up to are positive in the first part and negative in the second part.
  • These intermediate terms will completely cancel each other out.

The Remaining Terms of

  • After cancellation, only the first three terms of the first part remain.
  • And the last three terms of the second part remain.

Applying the Limit as

  • We need the limit of the sum:
  • As , the denominators , , and become infinitely large.
  • Therefore, , , and

Final Arithmetic Calculation

  • The limit simplifies to:
  • Substitute the factorial values:
  • Take the Least Common Multiple (LCM) which is 6:
  • Simplify the fraction:

The Sigma Insight: Sum of Special Series

Analyzing the Setup

Welcome, fellow traveler on the path of JEE Advanced mathematics. Today, we are going to dismantle a problem that, at first glance, looks like a chaotic mess of polynomials and factorials.
But beneath that complexity lies a beautiful, rhythmic structure waiting to be revealed. Let us begin by examining our general term:
When you encounter a polynomial divided by a factorial, your mathematical intuition should immediately trigger a specific alarm: Telescoping Series. This is the art of breaking a complex term into a difference of two simpler terms, such that the intermediate values cancel out like falling dominoes.

The Algebraic Surgery

Our first mission is to perform some algebraic surgery on that numerator. We want to see if we can relate to the factorial in the denominator.
Consider the product of three consecutive integers: . If you expand this, you get .
Look closely at how similar this is to our numerator! The difference is merely a constant. We can rewrite our numerator as:
Now, substitute this back into our general term. We get:
By splitting this into two fractions, we obtain:

The Magic of Cancellation

Here is where the magic happens. Recall that .
When we divide the first fraction, the terms cancel out perfectly, leaving us with . Thus, our general term simplifies to:
This is the telescoping form we were hunting for. Now, we set up the sum:
When you write out the terms of this sum, you will see the positive part of one term cancelling the negative part of another. For instance, the from the first part will cancel with the from the second part.
This continues until only the first three terms of the first part and the last three terms of the second part remain.

The Final Push

As approaches infinity, the terms involving , , and in the denominator grow infinitely large, causing the fractions to vanish to zero.
We are left with the sum of the first three terms:
Calculating this, we get:
You have just mastered the art of the telescoping series. The final result is . Keep this pattern in your toolkit; it is a powerful weapon for your JEE arsenal.

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