IMPORTANT: Clarification and Criticisms

Okay guys, really your first two weeks were fine, but the point of this week was to expand upon what you SHOULD have learned from the first week. As far as I know these are not here for you to submit your responses and then forget the blog ever existed. From what I saw I feel that VERY few of you even bothered to look over the first/second week's comments.

There seems to be a decent amount of confusion, so for that I apologize.

For the first sequence, we're talking about the SUM of the first n EVEN integers (positive ones only that is.)

What this means is that each sum will start with 2, then add 4, then add 6, and so on and so on until you have added a total of n numbers.

The second sequence is the exact same thing except with odd numbers instead of even ones! This means that for some n, you will be adding together n numbers!! Please take note of this and correct your post if you did something else.


Furthermore, I cannot stress this enough, read my previous post concerning week 2!!! It contains the correct formula from week 2 and it IS useful (almost essential) for this week's answer!

For part b in both questions, I do not expect something in terms of the previous term. So you cannot say something like "it's the one before it plus 2." You need to come up with a formula in terms of n. (This should be easy to do for question 1 if you use last week's formula and should be easy to do for question 2 if you just look at the results that you have calculated.)

Finally, for question 2c, please try to think about what is going on with the problem. Saying that a pattern continues indefinitely because you have a hunch is NOT okay within the realm of mathematics. You need to come up with some sort of justification (be it formal or not) other than just "a pattern exists for the first 8 terms... so it must continue forever!"

Hint: Use week 2's question combined with question 1.

Finally, I will say again, if ANYTHING is ambiguous to you or if you are just outright confused, either email me or leave a comment!