SOLUTION: I dont understand how the sigma or summation sign works, could someone help me out with this problem; I should write the following series in expand form; (because I dont have the

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Question 208302: I dont understand how the sigma or summation sign works, could someone help me out with this problem;
I should write the following series in expand form; (because I dont have the sigma sign on my computer I'll just write out my problem) the upper limit of summation is 5 and the lower limit of summation is k=1 and next to the sigma sign there is a fraction 1/2k or more simply said the sum of 1/2k for values of k from 1 to 5. Could someone explain how this problem works/ how I would solve it?
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The sigma is simply shorthand for saying 'add these values up from k=1 to k=5'. So instead of saying 1+2+3+4+5, we can say

This means that

So all we're doing here is plugging in k=1, k=2, k=3, etc into the expression in the sigma symbol and adding them up.

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In your case, you're going to plug in k=1, k=2, k=3, k=4, and k=5 into and add up the terms to get: