Practice Program

Our goal is to write a program that computes the following sum:

sum = 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6

(This may look like a pointless thing to do, but you will see such sums in calculus, where they are called harmonic series.) Here is a skeleton of the program:

// Class definition for HarmonicSeries
class HarmonicSeries
{
  double value()
  {
    int term=1, lastTerm = 6;
    double sum = 0.0;
    
    while ( term <= lastTerm )
    {
       ; // add the next term to sum
       ; // increment term
    }

    return sum;
  } 
}

// Class for testing HarmonicSeries objects
class HarmonicTester
{
  public static void main ( String[] args )
  {
    HarmonicSeries series = new HarmonicSeries();

    System.out.println("Sum of 6 terms:" + series.value() ) ;
  }
}

A few notes on the program:

1. The class HarmonicSeries describes an object that can compute the sum we want.
2. The method value() of that object will do the computation.
3. A HarmonicSeries constructor exists automatically, even though the program doesn't explicitly describe one.
4. The class HarmonicTester creates a HarmonicSeries object, then uses value() to calculate the sum, then prints it out.