How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
For every real ,
Statement
Write for the canonical natural (Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing) and define the factorial as the finite product (Finite sums and finite products, by recursion)
so that , the empty product, and . Every is a positive real. Then, for every ,
the numerator being the integer power of Integer powers and the convergence that of Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals.
The index range needs no adjustment: is defined at with value , and , so the sequence begins with .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A real ; the modulus ; the factorials ; and the canonical naturals .
denotes the statement , where , and are fixed in step 1.3.
Finite products: the empty product is , , and a product of positive factors is positive (Finite sums and finite products, by recursion, Laws of finite sums and finite products).
Integer powers: , , and implies (Integer powers , Monotonicity of and of , Laws of integer exponents).
Absolute value: , , and for (Basic properties of the absolute value).
Induction principle (The principle of mathematical induction).
Canonical naturals: and invertible for , is strictly increasing, and for every real there is a natural with (Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing, Every complete ordered field is Archimedean, Order on the natural numbers, is a linear order on ).
Order arithmetic: Inverses of positives are positive, and reciprocation reverses order, claim 4 of Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication and Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities state the strict forms, that gives , that multiplication by a positive element preserves , and that inequalities may be translated and added; adjoining the case of equality gives the nonstrict forms used below, and multiplication by sends both sides to , so a nonnegative multiplier preserves . Products of nonnegative inequalities multiply in the nonstrict form stated by Multiplying inequalities of positives.
Geometric sequences: implies (For the sequence is null, and for the sequence diverges to ); a scalar multiple of a convergent sequence converges to the scalar multiple of the limit (Algebra of limits: sums, scalar multiples, products and quotients).
Squeeze theorem, and the fact that a constant sequence converges to its value (The squeeze theorem, Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences).
A sequence converges to if and only if some tail of it does; the -th tail of is (Convergence depends only on the tail, Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences).
Proof
Each is a product of the positive reals , , hence positive, and ; also .
For every one has : at both sides are , and if then , so this follows by induction on .
Take a natural with and put and . Then , since and , and .
The statement holds, with equality: .
Fix and assume , that is .
Then holds. Indeed , and gives , hence ; since also by step 1.5 and , multiplying the two nonnegative inequalities gives .
By the induction principle holds for every , and always, so for every .
Since , the sequence converges to , hence so does ; the constant sequence also converges to , so the squeeze theorem applied to step 3.1 shows that the -th tail converges to , and therefore converges to . Finally by steps 1.1 and 1.2, so .
Remarks
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The threshold is chosen so that the ratio is bounded by a constant less than . Beyond index each further factor of the factorial is at least , so multiplying by and dividing by that factor shrinks the term by at least the factor . That is the entire mechanism: a factorial eventually beats a geometric sequence because its ratios, unlike a geometric sequence's, tend to .
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No halving is used. Many texts take with ; here it is enough to take with , which the Archimedean property supplies directly and which keeps every quantity a ratio of things already in hand.
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The case is not special. Then , and the bound reads for , which is correct since those terms are ; and converges to because , so For the sequence is null, and for the sequence diverges to applies unchanged.
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This is the strongest of the three standard comparisons on this page. For every and every positive rational , says a power is beaten by a geometric sequence; this says every geometric sequence, that is every fixed , is beaten by the factorial. Instances are worked in The four standard limits , , and , computed ↗.
Depends on
Finite sums and finite products, by recursion
Laws of finite sums and finite products
Integer powers
Laws of integer exponents
Monotonicity of and of
For the sequence is null, and for the sequence diverges to
Every complete ordered field is Archimedean
The squeeze theorem
Algebra of limits: sums, scalar multiples, products and quotients
Convergence depends only on the tail
Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals
Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences
Basic properties of the absolute value
The principle of mathematical induction
Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing
Inverses of positives are positive, and reciprocation reverses order
Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication
Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities
Multiplying inequalities of positives
Order on the natural numbers
is a linear order on