Can an alternating series ever be absolutely convergent? Can an alternating series EVER be absolutely convergent?
I am examining practice problems in my calculus book and I haven't yet come across a case where this is so.  It might be because they are simple, but I'm genuinely curious.

Let $p_n > 0$ be a positive sequence and $a_n = (-1)^n p_n$ a corresponding alternating sequence. 
Then in short, even if the series $P =\sum p_n$ does converge or not, the pair-wise cancelation power of having consecutive terms of opposite signs in the  series allows $A=\sum a_n$ to converge more easily, under milder conditions on $p_n$. 
For instance if $p_n \to 0$ monotonously, then $A$ converge, whatever $P$ does (converges or not). And you can easily bound the convergence rate. This is called  the Leibniz rule. 
For instance, the alternating harmonic series $\frac{(-1)^n}{n}$ has a finite sum ($-\log 2 \simeq 0.693$) but the harmonic series $\frac{1}{n}$ does not. A simple change of signs allows to turn an infinite (sum of the harmonic series) into a quite small number.
If  $P$ converges (and absolutely by definition), then $A$ converges absolutely too and even more easily, as you can see since $|A| \le P$.
For instance, the geometric series $1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ⋯$ sums to $1$ and its alternating counterpart  $1/2 − 1/4 + 1/8 − 1/16 + ⋯$ sums to $1/3$.
Finally, alternating series are useful in practice, they can be used for faster numerical summation with series acceleration.
