Python program to calculate harmonic series

Question

Does anyone know how to write a program in Python that will calculate the addition of the harmonic series. i.e. 1 + 1/2 +1/3 +1/4...

Answer 1

I add another solution, this time using recursion, to find the n-th Harmonic number.

General implementation details

Function Prototype: harmonic_recursive(n)

Function Parameters: n - the n-th Harmonic number

Base case: If n equals 1 return 1.

Recur step: If not the base case, call harmonic_recursive for the n-1 term and add that result with 1/n. This way we add each time the i-th term of the Harmonic series with the sum of all the previous terms until that point.

Pseudocode

(this solution can be implemented easily in other languages too.)

harmonic_recursive(n):
    if n == 1:
        return 1
    else:
        return 1/n + harmonic_recursive(n-1)

Python code

def harmonic_recursive(n):
    if n == 1:
        return 1
    else:
        return 1.0/n + harmonic_recursive(n-1)