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| Question 37263:  The first 4 terms of an arithmetic sequence are 187, 173, 159, and 145.
 a.    Give an explicit formula for this sequence.
 b.    Give a recursive formula for this sequence.
 
 
 The first three terms of a geometric sequence are 3, -54, 972.
 c.    Give an explicit formula for this sequence.
 d.    Give a recursive formula for this sequence.
 Answer by fractalier(6550)
      (Show Source): 
You can put this solution on YOUR website! Okay, if our sequence is 187, 173, 159, 145, we can see that our common difference is -14, that is, each term is 14 less than the one before it... The explicit formula looks like this
 A-sub-n = 187 - 14(n-1) where n is the nth term of the sequence
 A recursive relationship here shows how the (n + 1)th term is related to the nth term...here we have
 A-sub-n+1 = A-sub-n - 14
 Now for the geometric sequence 3, -54, 972, we can see that we are multiplying each successive term by -18...thus the explicit formula looks like this:
 A-sub-n = 3(-18)^(n-1)  and the recursive form is
 A-sub-n+1 = (-18) times A-sub-n
 where n is the nth term of the sequence
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