- #1
DatGuy
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Hi. I'm currently tutoring this student with High school math, and I'm completely stumped on this question that he was asked on his test. I'm hoping the community can help me help my student!
The student was presented with two sums of a geometric sequence (eg, Sum of the first 5 terms and sum of the first 8 terms, both of which indicate that the sequence is not convergent), and he's supposed to find the first term of the sequence as well as the common factor.
Sn = a (r^n - 1) / (r-1)
tn = (t1)(r^(n-1))
I've Googled and looked through my notes but I can't find anything with this type of example! I thought that maybe I could do a substitution but that didn't really work out...
Homework Statement
The student was presented with two sums of a geometric sequence (eg, Sum of the first 5 terms and sum of the first 8 terms, both of which indicate that the sequence is not convergent), and he's supposed to find the first term of the sequence as well as the common factor.
Homework Equations
Sn = a (r^n - 1) / (r-1)
tn = (t1)(r^(n-1))
The Attempt at a Solution
I've Googled and looked through my notes but I can't find anything with this type of example! I thought that maybe I could do a substitution but that didn't really work out...