TITLE: An exercise from Apostol's book
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: I am trying to solve following problem from Apostol's Mathematical Analysis. The problem could be very trivial, but I am not getting clue for it.

Let $\{a_n\}$ be a sequence of real numbers in $[-2,2]$ such that 
  $$|a_{n+2}-a_{n+1}|\le \frac{1}{8} |a_{n+1}^2-a_n^2| \,\,\,\, \mbox{ for all } n\ge 1.$$
  Prove that $\{a_n\}$ is convergent. 

Q. Any hint for solving this? (I was not getting the restrictions of interval and the factor $\frac{1}{8}$).
My try: since $a_i\in [-2,2]$ so $a_i^2\in [0,4]$. Thus, $|a_{n+1}^2-a_n^2|\le 4$ and so $|a_{n+2}-a_{n+1}|\le \frac{1}{2}$. After this, I couldn't proceed. 
Any HINT is sufficient.

REPLY [7 votes]: It suffices to show that $(a_n)_n$ is a Cauchy sequence.
By the the given condition, for $n\geq  1$, since $|a_n|\leq 2$,
$$\begin{align}|a_{n+2}-a_{n+1}|&\le \frac{1}{8} |a_{n+1}^2-a_n^2| =\frac{1}{8}|a_{n+1}+a_n| |a_{n+1}-a_n|\\&\leq  \frac{2+2}{8} |a_{n+1}-a_n|=\frac{1}{2} |a_{n+1}-a_n|.
\end{align}$$
It follows that
$$|a_{n+2}-a_{n+1}|\leq \frac{1}{2} |a_{n+1}-a_n|\leq \frac{1}{2^2} |a_{n}-a_{n-1}|\leq
\cdots\leq \frac{1}{2^n} |a_{2}-a_{1}|.$$
Hence if $n>m\geq 1$ then
$$|a_n-a_m|\leq |a_{2}-a_{1}|\sum_{k=m-1}^{n-2}\frac{1}{2^k}\leq \frac{|a_{2}-a_{1}|}{2^{m-2}}\to 0$$
as $m\to\infty$.