Zulip Chat Archive

Stream: Is there code for X?

Topic: limit comparison test for sums


Joris van Winden (Feb 04 2026 at 17:28):

Is there a lemma in mathlib which says that if f / g converges to a constant, then f is summable iff g is summable (i.e., the limit comparison test)? The closest I could find was summable_of_isBigO, but this is not really useful to me since I want to apply the test to show divergence.

A similar theorem can also be formulated in terms of Asymptotics.isTheta, but there I still found nothing.

Etienne Marion (Feb 04 2026 at 17:34):

I would say the closest is IsEquivalent.summable_iff_nat (it is the case where the constant is one). Also your constant would have to be nonzero.

You can also use summable_of_isBigO to do a reasoning by contrapositive.

Sébastien Gouëzel (Feb 04 2026 at 17:34):

docs#IsEquivalent.summable_iff gives it when the ratio tends to 1, from which the general case follows easily.

Joris van Winden (Feb 04 2026 at 19:04):

Would it be worthwhile to add an IsTheta version of summable_iff?


Last updated: Feb 28 2026 at 14:05 UTC