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| Math Central | Quandaries & Queries |
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Question from Juan, a student: In an arithmetic sequence, the first term is -2, the fourth term is 16 and the nth B. What is the value of n. |
Hi Juan,
The formula for arithmetic sequence is an=a1+(n-1)d where a1 is the first term, an is the nth term in the sequence and d is the common difference.
So for the fourth term we can write it as
16=-2+(4-1)d
What is the value of d? Once d is found, you can use the same formula for the nth term 11998 to find how many terms are in the sequence.
Hope this helps,
Janice
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