A tiny note on mathematical induction

Stefano Ferri

10.08.2005

Abstract

There are plenty of documents devoted to mathematical induction in the Net. Nev-
ertheless, I decide to write this tiny note on mathematical induction expecially for my
course Mathematics I for Biology and Medicine. The programme of the course does not
mention the word induction, however the book makes use of it in several occasions. If
you are in the course and you are interested to the topic, it will make no harm to read
what follows.

1 Introduction
I shall start this note from an example of [1]. The author, at page 96, defines a sequence
{an }∞
n=0 of real numbers by the following rules:

a0 = 2
an+1 = 14 an + 3
4 for n = 1, 2, 3, . . .
A sequence defined by telling how to compute the n’th element as a function of the elements
which have already been defined is said to be defined by recursion.
Then the author tackle the problem of finding whether this sequence has a limit and to
compute its value.
Of course, since we are not able to compute a n without computing first all of the terms
ak for k < n, it is in general very difficult, if not impossible, to compute the limit of a
sequence defined by recursion. For this reason the next thing the author does is to try to
see whether she is able to write the term a n of the sequence as an explicit functions of n.
This is not always possible and sometimes, even if possible, it may be utterly difficult to
find such a function. However, there are cases (like the one we are examining) in which this
can be done relatively easily.
The procedure used in the book begins with the calculation of the value of the first few
terms of the sequence as follows:

a1 = 14 a0 + 3
4 = 1
4 ·2+ 3
4 = 45 ;

a2 = 14 a1 + 3
4 = 1
4 · 5
4 + 3
4 = 17
16 ;

a3 = 14 a2 + 3
4 = 1
4 · 17
16 + 3
4 = 65
64 ;

a4 = 14 a3 + 3
4 = 1
4 · 65
64 + 3
4 = 257
256 ;

a5 = 14 a1 + 3
4 = 1
4 · 257
256 + 3
4 = 1025
1024 ;

1
2 Induction

At this point the author starts to “suspect” something. Namely, she suspects that a possible
22n +1
formula for the n’th term of the sequence {a n }∞ n=0 could be f (n) = 22n . When somebody
has this kind of “suspect” one says that she is formulating a conjecture.
Of course, just suspecting something is not enough in mathematics, so the next thing
done in the book is to look for a proof that we really have a n = f (n) for all values of n,
where f is the function defined above. Here is where it is used (without mentioning) the
process of mathematical induction.
The first thing which is done is to check that the equality a n = f (n) holds for n = 0.
0
Since a0 = 54 = 2 2+1 0 = 2 = f (1) the equality does hold for n = 0. Next, the author
checks that f (n) satisfy the recursion. Namely, that, for all n = 1, 2, 3, . . . , we have that
f (n + 1) = 41 f (n) + 43 . This is also done quite quickly by observing that:

1 3 1 22n + 1 3 22n + 1 3 22n + 1 + 3 · 22n 22n+2 + 1

f (n) + = · + = + = = = f (n + 1).
4 4 4 22n 4 22n+2 4 22n+2 22n+2
At this point the author concludes that the equality must hold for every value of n =
1, 2, 3, . . . .
Why can she conclude this? She reasons as follows: She knows that a 0 = f (0) and
also that a1 = 41 a0 + 34 and she also knows that f (1) = 14 f (0) + 43 , hence she concludes
that a1 = f (1). Then she starts the same reasoning again: a 1 = f (1), a2 = 14 a1 + 43 and
f (2) = 41 f (1) + 34 , so a2 = f (2). Then she does the same again starting from a 2 and so
on repeating the same process infinitely many times and concluding that a n = f (n) for all
n = 1, 2, 3, . . . .

2 Introducing mathematical induction

The process we just used to prove that a n = f (n) in the previous section can be formalised
as follows.
Principle of Mathematical Induction.
Suppose that we have a sequence of propositions {P n }∞ n=0 . (If the idea of having infinitely
many propositions confuse you, just think to a proposition which involves functions of integer
number, for example in the previous example, you can think that you want to prove the
infinitely many propositions of the list {a 0 = f (0), a1 = f (1), a2 = f (2), . . . } or that you
want to prove that an = f (n) for all n = 1, 2, 3, . . . .) Suppose that the following two
conditions are satisfied:

(1.) P0 is true;

(2.) For all integer n, if we assume that P n is true this implies that Pn+1 is true.

Then all the propositions in the list are true. (Or, if you preferred the formulation using
one proposition which involves functions of n, you conclude that this proposition is true for
every value of n = 1, 2, 3, . . . )

Example 2.1. Prove by mathematical induction that, for every natural number n, we have
that
n · (n + 1)
1 + 2 + 3 + ··· + n = .
2
 Stefano Ferri 3

Solution.
First we check that the proposition is true for n = 1. Notice that, if the sequence of
propositions is enumerated starting from 1 (or from 2 or whatever) we start from the first
number of the enumeration. It does not have to be 0. We have that 1·(1+1)
2 = 22 = 1, so the
proposition is true for n = 1.
Next we assume that the proposition is true for n and we would like to prove that, under
this assumption, we have that the proposition is also true for n + 1. Since we assume that
the proposition is true for n what we assume is that 1 :

n · (n + 1)
1 + 2 + 3 + ··· + n = .
2
We sum n + 1 to both sides of the equality and get:

n · (n + 1) n · (n + 1) 2 · (n + 1) (n + 2) · (n + 1)
1+2+3+· · ·+n+(n+1) = +(n+1) = + = .
2 2 2 2
A moment’s reflection should suffice to see that what we got is the formula we are trying to
prove evaluate in n + 1. Hence the proposition is true by mathematical induction. 

3 Why induction works

So far we have given examples of proof by induction and we tried to justify heuristically
that they were proofs, however we did not really explain why induction works.
Induction is based on a property of natural numbers called the well ordering principle.

Definition 3.1. We say that an ordered set A is well-ordered if every nonvoid subset B ⊆ A
has a smallest element.

The fact that natural numbers are well-ordered allows us to prove that induction works.

Proof. Suppose that we have a sequence of propositions {P i : i = 1, 2, 3, . . . } and that the

following holds.

(1.) P0 is true;

(2.) For all integer n, assuming that P n is true implies that also Pn+1 is true.

We want to prove that all the Pi are true. Suppose, by contradiction, that this is not the
case, then the subset:
B = {i : Pi is false}

in nonvoid. Hence, by the well ordering principle, B has a smallest element which we call
m. By (1.) m 6= 0. Moreover, since m is the smallest element of B and m 6= 0 we have that
m − 1 ≥ 0 and that Pm−1 is true. But then by (2.) we have that P m is true, reaching a
contradiction.
1
Warning. This is the most important step of the induction, it is called inductive step, and is the step
which allows us to pass from one number to the following one. It is crucial to understand that one assume
that the proposition is true for n and, using this assumption, prove that it is also true for n + 1
4 Induction

4 More examples and concluding remarks

After the first sections of this note you could start to think that induction is only useful
to prove propositions in arithmetics. For this reason, before the end of this note I want to
give you at least one example to show that this is not the case. The example I shall give
is a basic combinatorial property of finite sets. More examples can be found among the
exercises.

Example 4.1. Let A be a set with n elements. Then the set P(A) of all subsets of A (the
set P(A) is called the power set of A) contains 2 n elements.

Proof. We prove the theorem by induction over n. First we check the case in which A
contains 0 elements. In this case A is the empty set ∅ and his only subset is the empty set
itself. In other word P(A) = {∅} contains only one element and, since 2 0 = 1 this implies
that the theorem is true for n = 0.
Next we suppose that, if a set A contains n elements, then P(A) contains 2 n elements
and, using this assumption, we show that, if A contains n + 1 elements, then P(A) contains
2n+1 elements.
Let us keep our assimption in mind and consider a set A with n + 1 element. To fix our
ideas we can think that A = {1, 2, . . . , n, n + 1}. There are two kind of subsets of A: those
which contain n + 1 and those which do not contain n + 1. All subsets which do not contain
n+1 can be considered as subset of A0 = {1, 2, 3, . . . , n}, hence, by our inductive assumption
there are 2n of them. All subsets which contain n + 1 are the union of a subset of A 0 and the
set {n + 1}, hence there are 2n such subsets. Alltogether, we have 2 n + 2n = 2n+1 subsets
of A. This complete the proof.

I conclude this note by remarking that what I presented here is just the most basic type
of induction you can find in mathematics. There exist many variant and sophistications you
can find. For istance:

• You can have different way to enumerate your propositions, so you might need to start
from a number other that 0 your argument.

• You can have your propositions enumerated as {P k1 , Pk2 , Pk3 , . . . } with the function
mapping n to kn which is very difficult to compute. In this case a standard way to
procede is to assume that you can find a minimal counterexample to what you are
trying to prove and then show that you can (under this assumption) build a smaller
counterexample. (This technique is very common in the theory of finite groups.)

• You can have a well-ordered collection of proposition in which the set of indeces is a
set different from N. This is the case with the so-called transfinite induction.

Exercises 4.2.
n(n+1)(2n+1)
1. Let n be a positive integer. Prove that: 1 + 4 + 9 + · · · + n 2 = 6 .

2. Let n be a positive integer. Prove that 4 + 10 + 16 + · · · + (6n − 2) = n(3n + 1).

3. Prove that, for every x ∈ R \ {0, 1} and every n ∈ N, we have that: x 0 + x1 + x2 +

· · · + xn = x a−1−1 .
n+1

4. Let n be a positive integer. Prove that n 2 > n + 1 whenever n ≥ 2.

 Stefano Ferri 5

5. Let n be an integer number greater or equal to 4. Prove that n 2 ≤ 2n .

6. Find the mistake in the following argument.

Theorem. All socks have the same colour.

Proof. We shall prove that all finite sets of socks are monochrome by induction on the
number of socks contained in the set. If the set contains only one sock, then the theorem
is trivially true. Now suppose that the proposition is true for sets containing n socks
and let A = {1, 2, 3, . . . , n, n + 1} be a set of n + 1 socks. The set A 0 = {1, 2, 3, . . . , n}
has n element, hence it is monochrome. Also the set A 00 = {2, 3, 4, . . . , n, n + 1} has
n element, hence, using again the inductive assumption, it is monocrome. Now, from
these two facts we deduce that n has the same colour has 1 because they both lie in A 0
and also that n has the same colour as n + 1 because they both are in A 00 . Hence, all
socks 1, 2, 3, . . . , n, n + 1 have the same colour and the theorem is proved by induction.


5 Appendix (direct proofs of the previous examples)

Example 2.1 and 4.1 are propositions which are interesting in their own right. Both of them,
besides the proof I presented, have an easy direct proof.
Theorem 5.1. For every natural number n, we have that
n(n + 1)
1 + 2 + 3 + ··· + n = .
2
Proof. In the following table there are 1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + n black dots.


 •

• •

n row • • •



 · · ·

• • • ... •
| {z }
n columns

Now we write picture twice the same table (one is made using black dots and the other one
using white dots): 

 • ◦ ◦ ... ◦ ◦ ◦

 • • ◦ ... ◦ ◦ ◦



• •
 • ... ◦ ◦ ◦
n row · · · ... · · ·



 • • • ... ◦ ◦ ◦

• •

 • ... • ◦ ◦

• • • ... • • ◦
| {z }
n+1 columns

The last lable contains n(n + 1) dots and it also contains twice 1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + n dots, from
which it follows that 1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + n = n(n+1)
2 .

Theorem 5.2. Let A be a set with n elements. Then the set P(A) of all subsets of A
contains 2n elements.
6 Induction

Proof. Counting the number of subsets of A is the same as counting the number of functions
between A and a set {0, 1}. Given a subset B of A we define a function χ B : A −→ {0, 1}
by: 
0 if x ∈ B
χB (x) :=
1 otherwise
(χB is called characteristic function of B). On the other hand, if we have a function
f : A −→ {0, 1} we can define a subset B of A by the following rule:
x ∈ B if and only if f (x) = 1.
Now, if we write A = {1, 2, 3 . . . , n}, and we have a function f : A −→ {0, 1}, we have
that f (1) is either 0 or 1, for each of the two possibility we can have that f (2) is 0 or 1, and,
carring on the process, for each of the four possibilities we have that f (3) can be either 0
or 1. Continuing this until the last element we have that we can build exactly 2 · 2 · 2 · · · · 2
(n times) functions or, which is the same, we have 2 n functions, as requested.

References
[1] Claudia Neuhauser, Calculus for biology and medicine (Second edition), Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River (NJ), 2004.