Graceofgod
Member
I see, however:3unitz said:its a pretty complicated reasoning as to why this works - which you wont prove till some math courses on real analysis. there is however a theorem which states that we can differentiate or integrate each term of the series like a normal polynomial of a power series (i know its wiki but just look at the form of a power series).
1 + x^2 + x^3 + ... = 1/(1 - x) is in this form, thus our theorem allows us to integrate or differentiate each term and equate it to the derivative or integral of the RHS
d/dx(1) + d/dx(x^2) + d/dx(x^3) + ... + d/dx(x^n) + ... = d/dx[1/(1 - x)]
1 + 2x + 3x^2 + ... + nx^(n-1) + ... = 1/(1 - x)^2
d/dx[1/(1 - x)] = -(1/(1-x)^2)