KAZAAM’S REVIEWER

LESSON 1

SEQUENCE

- A Sequence is a set of things (usually numbers) that are in order.

- Each number in the sequence is called a term (or sometimes "element" or "member")

ARITHMETIC SEQUENCE

- In an Arithmetic Sequence the difference between one term and the next is a constant.
- In other words, we just add the same value each time ... infinitely.

In General we could write an arithmetic sequence like this:

{a, a+d, a+2d, a+3d, ... }

RULE

We can write an Arithmetic Sequence as a rule:

(We use "n−1" because d is not used in the 1st term).

EXAMPLES:

1. Find the 35th term in the arithmetic sequence 3, 9, 15, 21, …

 There are three things needed in order to find the 35th term using the formula:
o the first term (a1)
o the common difference between consecutive terms (d)
o and the term position (n)

 From the given sequence, we can easily read off the first term and common
difference. The term position is just the n value in the nth term, thus in the 35th
term, n=35.
  Therefore, the known values that we will substitute in the arithmetic formula are

 So the solution to finding the missing term is,

2. Find the 125th term in the arithmetic sequence 4, −1, −6, −11, …

 This arithmetic sequence has the first term a1=4, and a common difference of
−5.

 Since we want to find the 125th term, the n value would be n=35. The
following are the known values we will plug into the formula:

 The missing term in the sequence is

calculated as,
3. If one term in the arithmetic sequence is a21=−17 nd the common difference is
d =−3. Find the following:

a) Write a rule that can find any term in the sequence.

b) Find the twelfth term (a12) and eighty-second term (a82) term.

 SOLUTION TO PART A

 Because we know a term in the sequence which is a21=−17 and the common
difference d=−3, the only missing value in the formula which we can easily
solve is the first term, a1.

 Since we found a1=43 and we know d=−3, the rule to find any term in the
sequence is

 SOLUTION TO PART B

 To answer the second part of the problem, use the rule that we found in part a)
which is

 Here are the calculations side-by-side.