Cauchy sequence

In mathematics, a Cauchy sequence (French pronunciation: ​[koʃi]; English pronunciation: /ˈkoʊʃiː/ KOH-shee), named after Augustin-Louis Cauchy, is a sequence whose elements become arbitrarily close to each other as the sequence progresses. More precisely, given any small positive distance, all but a finite number of elements of the sequence are less than that given distance from each other.

Note: it is not sufficient for each term to become arbitrarily close to the preceding term. For instance, does not converge. Rather, it is required for a given N that any pair m,n > N we have

The utility of Cauchy sequences lies in the fact that in a complete metric space (one where all such sequences are known to converge to a limit), the criterion for convergence depends only on the terms of the sequence itself, as opposed to the definition of convergence, which uses the limit value as well as the terms. This is often exploited in algorithms, both theoretical and applied, where an iterative process can be shown relatively easily to produce a Cauchy sequence, consisting of the iterates, thus fulfilling a logical condition, such as termination.