15.

2 Understanding
Geometric Sequences
Stephanie Goldsberry
Warm-Up
Find the common ratio and the next three terms in the geometric sequence.

1) 2, 8, 32, 128 ... 2) -1/2, 1/4, -1/8, 1/16 ...

Explore: Understanding Recursive
and Explicit Rules for Sequences
Explicit rule for a sequence: Defines the nth term
as a function of n.
Recursive rule for a sequence: Defines the nth
term of a sequence in terms of one or more
previous terms.
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p. 679
Reflect

p. 679
Explain 1: Constructing Recursive
and Explicit Rules for Given
Geometric Sequences
To write a recursive rule for a sequence, you
need to know the first term, and a rule for
successive terms.

P. 680
Example 1: Write a recursive
rule and an explicit rule for
each geometric sequence.

P. 680
P. 680
Recursive rule: f(n) = f(n-1) r, n 2
f(n) = a

P. 680
Explicit rule: f(n) = a rn-1, n 1

P. 680
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Reflect

P. 681
Your Turn

P. 682
Explain 2: Deriving the General
Forms of Geometric Sequence
Rules

P. 682
Example 2: Use each geometric
sequence to help write a recursive rule
and an explicit rule for any geometric
sequence. For the general rules, the
values of n are consecutive integers
starting with 1.
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Reflect

P. 683
Your Turn

P. 683
Explain 3: Constructing a Geometric
Sequence Given Two Terms
The explicit and recursive rules for a geometric sequence can
also be written in subscript notation. In subscript notation, the
subscript indicates the position of the term in the sequence.
a1, a2 , and a3 are the first, second, and third terms of a
sequence respectively. In general, an is the nth term of a
sequence.

P. 684
Example 3: Write an explicit rule
for each sequence using
subscript notation.

P. 684
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Reflect

P. 685
Your Turn

P. 686
Elaborate

P. 686
Your Turn

P. 686
Homework: P. 687-691 #1-23

Due Friday, 2/10