Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In mathematics, a generalized hypergeometric series is a series in which the ratio of successive coefficients indexed by n is a rational function of n. The series, if convergent, defines a generalzed hypergeometric function, which may then be defined over a wider domain of the argument by analytic continuation. The generalized hypergeometric series is sometimes just called the hypergeometric series, though this term also sometimes just refers to the Gaussian hypergeometric series. Generalized hypergeometric functions include the (Gaussian) hypergeometric function and the confluent hypergeometric function as special cases, which in turn have many particular special functions as special cases, such as elementary functions, Bessel functions, and the classical orthogonal polynomials.