Geometric series in the context of Arithmetic series

Quadrature of the Parabola (Greek: Τετραγωνισμὸς παραβολῆς) is a treatise on geometry, written by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC and addressed to his Alexandrian acquaintance Dositheus. It contains 24 propositions regarding parabolas, culminating in two proofs showing that the area of a parabolic segment (the region enclosed by a parabola and a line) is ${\displaystyle {\tfrac {4}{3}}}$ that of a certain inscribed triangle.

It is one of the best-known works of Archimedes, in particular for its ingenious use of the method of exhaustion and in the second part of a geometric series. Archimedes dissects the area into infinitely many triangles whose areas form a geometric progression. He then computes the sum of the resulting geometric series, and proves that this is the area of the parabolic segment. This represents the most sophisticated use of a reductio ad absurdum argument in ancient Greek mathematics, and Archimedes' solution remained unsurpassed until the development of integral calculus in the 17th century, being succeeded by Cavalieri's quadrature formula.

The Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics or the Kerala school was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Tirur, Malappuram, Kerala, India, which included among its members: Parameshvara, Neelakanta Somayaji, Jyeshtadeva, Achyuta Pisharati, Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri, Achyuta Panikkar,Govinda Menon, Madhava Nair, Keshava Menon. The school flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and its original discoveries seem to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559–1632). In attempting to solve astronomical problems, the Kerala school independently discovered a number of important mathematical concepts. Their most important results—series expansion for trigonometric functions—were described in Sanskrit verse in a book by Neelakanta called Tantrasangraha (around 1500), and again in a commentary on this work, called Tantrasangraha-vakhya, of unknown authorship. The theorems were stated without proof, but proofs for the series for sine, cosine, and inverse tangent were provided a century later in the work Yuktibhasa (c. 1530), written in Malayalam, by Jyesthadeva, and also in a commentary on Tantrasangraha.

Their work, completed two centuries before the invention of calculus in Europe, provided what is now considered the first example of a power series (apart from geometric series).