Sigma Notation Series Worksheets

What is Sigma Notation of a Series - Sigma notation is a method used to write out a long sum in a concise way. It is taken for convenience in order to write huge expressions in a simple and easy way. For example, we often wish to sum a number of terms such as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 or 1 + 4 + 9 + 16 + 25 + 36 where there is an obvious pattern to the numbers involved. The first of these is the sum of the first five whole numbers, and the second is the sum of the first six square numbers. More generally, if we take a sequence of numbers u1, u2, u3, . . . , un then we can write the sum of these numbers as u1 + u2 + u3 + . . . + un. A shorter way of writing this is to let ur represent the general term of the sequence and put

Here, the symbol Σ is the Greek capital letter Sigma corresponding to our letter 'S', and refers to the initial letter of the word 'Sum'.