3

What I have thought about this is:

  1. we may use L'Hopstal's rule to calculate $\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{((1+\frac{1}{n})^n-e)}{\frac{1}{n}}$, both the numerator and denominator goes to 0 as n goes to infinity. But calculating the derivative of $(1+1/n)^n$ seems to be very complicated.

  2. Using Taylor series to calculate the dominant terms of $(1+1/n)^n$, but I'm not really sure if it makes sense to let $"n=\infty"$. Equivalently maybe we can expand $(1+x)^{1/x}$ at $x=0$, but it's not defined.

Maybe I wasn't on the right track. Even if the solution uses a different approach, I would still love to know how to expand $(1+x)^{1/x}$. Thanks for any suggestions.

1 Answers1

2

hint

$$f (x)=(1+x)^\frac 1x=e^{\frac {1}{x}\ln (1+x)} $$

$$\ln (1+x)=x-\frac {x^2}{2}(1+\epsilon (x)) $$

$$f (x)=e.e^{-\frac {x}{2}(1+\epsilon (x))} $$

$$=e\Bigl (1-\frac {x}{2}(1+\epsilon (x)\Bigr)$$

The limit will be $$-\frac {e}{2} $$