Clark College Winter 2008 John Mitchell

Sequences and Series Lecture Notes

Introduction
Although much of the mathematics weve done in this course deals with algebra and graphing,
many mathematicians would say that in general mathematics deals with patterns, whether theyre
visual patterns or numerical patterns. For example, exponential growth is a growth pattern that is
shared by populations, bank accounts etc,
Sequences and Series deal with numerical patterns. Well start with what a sequence is.

Sequences
Weve all come across the plain English definition of a sequence. For example, when you find the
DNA sequence of a mouse, its an ordered list of DNA proteins. Similarly, in mathematics, a
sequence is an ordered list of numbers following some pattern, for example,
1,4,7,10,.
In this sequence, the pattern is that I started with a 1, and add 3 to get the next term (the name for
the elements of the sequence), and so on. Once you know the pattern you can figure out extra
terms (or even go on for ever figuring out terms, for example the next few terms are
1,4,7,10,13,16,19,.

Notation and Formulas for Sequences:

Now that youve got the intuitive idea of what a sequence is, lets look at some notation and
terminology.
The ingredients of a sequence are called terms (this is to distinguish them from the elements of a set
a set has no particular order but a sequence does). If we need to use variables for the names of the
terms, we use subscripts to say which term were talking about. For example, if I use the letter a for
the name of the sequence above, we have that
a1 = 1, a2 = 4, a3 = 7,....
Now I can use this notation to give the sequence as a formula rather than a list. For example, the
formula in general for the above sequence is
an = 1 + ( n 1) 3
Where n is any integer, 1, 2, 3, etc. The advantage of giving the formula rather than a list is that you
can get any term you like without getting all the rest. For example, the 20th term of our sequence
above is
a20 = 1 + (19 ) 3 = 1 + 57 = 58
This is more without the formula, since I would have had to list lots of terms.

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Clark College Winter 2008 John Mitchell

Now that you understand the basic labeling for sequences we can look at the notation for specifying
a sequence using a formula rather than a list of terms. Its easiest for me to show with an example.

Example: Write out the first 4 terms of the sequence given by

{un } = n 2 + 2
Solution: Instead of a list of the first few terms, weve been given the formula getting any term we
like. The way you read this notation is this. The left hand side uses set notation, since a sequence is
just a special type of set where the elements are ordered It gives the name of the series as u , so the
terms are called u1 , u2 , u3 and so on. The rule for getting the elements (or terms, as we call them) is
given on the right side.
So the above formula says that to get any particular term (the nth term) we square n and add 2.
So the first few terms are (just setting n=1,2,3,4) are:

u1 = (1) + 2 = 3,
2

u2 = ( 2 ) + 2 = 6,
2

u3 = ( 3) + 2 = 11,
2

u4 = ( 4 ) + 2 = 18
2

So the first 4 terms of the sequence are 3,6,11,18.

If youve spotted some similarity between function notation and sequence notation (for example,
the name is on the left of the =, and the rule is on the right), its not a coincidence. In fact, in
formal terms a sequence is just a function where the domain is the integers. In fact, we could just define
our sequence u using function notation

u ( n ) = n 2 + 2, , n = 1,2,3, 4...
-but if we do this we have to keep reminding the reader than the inputs are integers. So its nice to
have a special notation just for sequences to avoid confusion.

Sometimes the pattern the sequence follows can be very complicated, and figuring out the formula
is tough. Fortunately, in this introduction, we only look at very simple patterns, namely arithmetic
sequences and geometric sequences.

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Clark College Winter 2008 John Mitchell

Arithmetic Sequences
In an arithmetic sequence I generate the sequence by adding (or subtracting) a constant from a
particular term to get the next term. So the difference between successive terms is constant for an
arithmetic sequence. Look again at the sequence:
1,4,7,11,.
And you see the difference between each pair of terms is 3.
Another example. Here Ive started at 10, and Im subtracting 2 from each term to get the next
one.
10,8,6,4,.
Formulas for Arithmetic Sequences: If youre given an arithmetic sequence as a list and asked to
figure out the formula, the key is to determine the first term (well call this a ) and the difference
between successive terms (well call this d ). Then the formula for the nth term, where n is any
integer, is
an = a + ( n 1) d

Example. Find an expression for the nth term of the sequence -2,4,10,16,. And use this
formula to find the 15th term of the sequence.
Solution. You can easily see that the difference between successive terms is 6, and we start at -2.
Note that the difference between all the successive terms must be the same or its not an arithmetic series. So here
a = 2 and d = 6 . So the general formula is
an = a + ( n 1) d
an = 2 + ( n 1)( 6 )
Now the 15th term is
a15 = 2 + (14 )( 6 ) = 82

Now we look at geometric sequences.

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Clark College Winter 2008 John Mitchell

Geometric Sequences
In a geometric sequence the ratio between successive terms is constant, - to get the next term I
multiply the current term by a constant.
For example: 3,6,12,24,.
The next term in this sequence is of course 48, since each term is twice the last one.
Heres another example that is geometric, see if you can work out what the ratio is:
3,-1,1/3,-1/9,
To get the next term I multiply the current term by -1/3. So the constant ratio doesnt have to be
greater than one, it can be less, like in the example I just did.
Formulas for Geometric Sequences: If youre given a geometric sequence as a list and asked to
figure out the formula, the key is to determine the first term (well call this a ) and the ratio
between successive terms (well call this r ). Then the formula for the nth term, where n is any
integer, is

an = ar n 1
Note that the exponent only applies to the ratio bit. Also note the exponent is n-1, not n.

Example. Figure out the 8th term of

3,-1,1/3,-1/9,
1 1
Solution. The ratio between each pair of terms is , since you multiply the current term by
3 3
1
to get the next one (for example, to get a2 we multiply a1 which is 3 by , giving -1. We
3
1 1 1 1
multiply -1 by to get a3 = ( a2 ) = ( 1) = . And so on. So a = 3 and
3 3 3 3
n 1 7
1 1 1
r = . The nth term is an = ar n1 = 3 . So the 8 term is a8 = 3 which is
th

3 3 3
1
a8 = 0.00137
729

Well do series next, but before we do, its important to stress that arithmetic and geometric
sequences are special types of sequence. Not every sequence is one of these two types, and most are
neither arithmetic nor geometric. For example, the sequence 1,4,9,16, has an obvious pattern

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