Saturday 15 November 2014

sequences and series - Problem about sum of arithemtic progression and geometric progression




Question: An arithmetic sequence has a common difference of $1$ and a geometric sequence has a common ratio of $3$. A new sequence is formed by adding corresponding terms of these two progressions. It is given that the second and fourth term of the sequence are $12$ and $86$ respectively. Find, in terms of $n$,




  1. the $n^{th}$ term,

  2. the sum of the first $n$ terms



of the new sequence.



Answers:





  1. $n+1+3^n$.

  2. $\frac 1 2 n(n+3) + \frac{3}{2} 3^n - \frac{3}{2}$.



Working so far



I am stuck getting different values for $a$.




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Answer



The problem seems to be that you assume that the first term in both sequences is $a$.



Correct equations would be
$$u_2=a+1+3b=12$$
$$u_4=a+3+27b=86$$
where $a$ denotes the initial term of the arithmetic progression and $b$ is the initial term of the geometric progression.



I guess you can take it from here. (I got b=3 and a=2.)



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