TITLE: Does absolute convergence of a sum imply uniform convergence?
QUESTION [19 upvotes]: Suppose I have a series $\sum_{n = 0}^{\infty} f_{n}(x)$ which converges absolutely to a function $f(x)$. Does the series converge uniformly to $f(x)$? I want to say this follows from Dini's Theorem, but I can't seem to see how.

REPLY [16 votes]: There are easy counterexamples to the statement, which others have already supplied.
But let me say what mistake I think you're making.  Dini's Theorem has a lot of fine print: in particular, it requires the pointwise limit function to be continuous.  You can see that this hypothesis is not met in the above counterexamples.  Conversely, if each $f_n$ and also $\sum_{n=0}^{\infty} |f_n(x)|$ were continuous, then indeed you could apply Dini's Theorem to see that the convergence of $\sum_n |f_n(x)|$ is uniform, from which it follows that the convergence of $\sum_n f_n(x)$ is uniform, say via the Cauchy criterion.
You have my sympathies for forgetting this hypothesis of Dini's Test.  I still have a set of lecture notes up on my webpage where I state Dini's Test incorrectly (I can't find the tex file to change it!), and when I mentioned it in a second course more recently, I made my way through the statement and the proof (!) without making explicit the need for continuity of the limit function.  Finally I got it right: see for instance $\S III.1.4$ of these notes.

REPLY [2 votes]: In view of the reference to Dini one might ask, what if all $f_n$ and $f$ are continuous functions on a compact set $K$?  Thus if all $f_n \ge 0$, Dini would say the convergence is uniform on $K$.  But without that hypothesis it's not true.  Consider $K=[0,1]$ where
$f_{2n-1}$ is the piecewise-linear interpolation of $f_{2n-1}(0) = 0$, $f_{2n-1}(1/(2n)) = 1$, $f_{2n-1}(1/n) = 0$, $f_{2n-1}(1) = 0$, while $f_{2n}(x) = - f_{2n-1}(x)$.  Then 
$\sum_{n=1}^\infty f_n(x)$ converges absolutely to $f(x) = 0$ but the odd partial sums have maximum value 1.