<p>You know those SAT math questions that are like...</p>
<p>"What would be the 10586th number in this sequence?"</p>
<p>Or something. What are those kinds of problems called, and how would one go about solving them? (Sorry I can't find a better example to clarify what I'm talking about) I could never figure those out. :x</p>
<p>Thanks, and sorry if this is just a dumb question.</p>
<p>Generally the sequence has a pattern that repeats. Figure out what 10458 is a multiple of (eg, is it a multiple of 4) and find out what the pattern is for every 4 numbers. It's hard to explain so if you could find a real example that would be helpful</p>
<p>okay... so there are 2 types</p>
<p>arithmetic sequence
they give you the first 3: 1,2,3... let's say... then the pattern is add 1 each time so:
t sub n (<-the nth term in the sequence) = t sub 0 (<- the first) + (n-1)*r(<- the common ratio) soo.. in the sequence above n = 10586 t sub 0 = 1, so ...
t sub n = 1 + 1(10585) = 10586... see?</p>
<p>geometric sequence
they give you the first 3: 2,4,8... let's say... then the pattern is multiply by 2 each time so:
t sub n (<-the nth term in the sequence) = t sub 0 (<- the first) * r(<- the common ratio)^(n-1) soo.. in the sequence above n = 10586 t sub 0 = 1, so ...
t sub n = 2 * 2^(10585) = some big number...</p>
<p>Ahh, thank you so much.</p>
<p>no problem... I had to go look that up too before my math sat2</p>