Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Arithmetic progression
Summary
An arithmetic progression or arithmetic sequence ( ()) is a sequence of numbers such that the difference from any succeeding term to its preceding term remains constant throughout the sequence. The constant difference is called common difference of that arithmetic progression. For instance, the sequence 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, . . . is an arithmetic progression with a common difference of 2.
If the initial term of an arithmetic progression is and the common difference of successive members is , then the -th term of the sequence () is given by:
A finite portion of an arithmetic progression is called a finite arithmetic progression and sometimes just called an arithmetic progression. The sum of a finite arithmetic progression is called an arithmetic series.
According to an anecdote of uncertain reliability, young Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was in primary school, reinvented this method to compute the sum of the integers from 1 through 100, by multiplying n/2 pairs of numbers in the sum by the values of each pair n + 1. However, regardless of the truth of this story, Gauss was not the first to discover this formula, and some find it likely that its origin goes back to the Pythagoreans in the 5th century BC. Similar rules were known in antiquity to Archimedes, Hypsicles and Diophantus; in China to Zhang Qiujian; in India to Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara II; and in medieval Europe to Alcuin, Dicuil, Fibonacci, Sacrobosco
and to anonymous commentators of Talmud known as Tosafists.
Computation of the sum 2 + 5 + 8 + 11 + 14. When the sequence is reversed and added to itself term by term, the resulting sequence has a single repeated value in it, equal to the sum of the first and last numbers (2 + 14 = 16). Thus 16 × 5 = 80 is twice the sum.
The sum of the members of a finite arithmetic progression is called an arithmetic series. For example, consider the sum:
This sum can be found quickly by taking the number n of terms being added (here 5), multiplying by the sum of the first and last number in the progression (here 2 + 14 = 16), and dividing by 2:
In the case above, this gives the equation:
This formula works for any real numbers and .
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related courses (4)
MATH-521: Advanced analytic number theory
We will present the work of James Maynard (MF 2022) on the existence of bounded gaps between primes
MATH-337: Number theory I.c - Combinatorial number theory
This is an introductory course to combinatorial number theory. The main objective of this course is to learn how to use combinatorial, topological, and analytic methods to solve problems in number the
CS-101: Advanced information, computation, communication I
Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics a
Related lectures (32)
Sequences: Arithmetic and Geometric Progressions
Covers arithmetic and geometric progressions, strings, and recurrence relations.
Sequences: Relations, Summation, Strings
Covers arithmetic and geometric progressions, strings, and recurrence relations in sequences.
Relations, Sequences and Summations
Covers topics on relations, sequences, and summations, including lattices, recurrence relations, and sigma notation.
Related publications (33)
Rankin-Selberg coefficients in large arithmetic progressions
Let (?(f) (n))(n=1) be the Hecke eigenvalues of either a holomorphic Hecke eigencuspform or a Hecke-Maass cusp form f. We prove that, for any fixed ? > 0, under the Ramanujan-Petersson conjecture for GL(2) Maass forms, the Rankin-Selberg coefficients (?(f) ...
SCIENCE PRESS2023Arithmetic and geometric deformations of threefolds
Stefano Filipazzi, Fabio Bernasconi
We show that mixed-characteristic and equicharacteristic small deformations of 3-dimensional canonical (resp., terminal) singularities with perfect residue field of characteristic p>5 are canonical (resp., terminal). We discuss applications to arithmetic a ...
Hoboken2023Related people (5)
Related concepts (12)
Triangular number
A triangular number or triangle number counts objects arranged in an equilateral triangle. Triangular numbers are a type of figurate number, other examples being square numbers and cube numbers. The nth triangular number is the number of dots in the triangular arrangement with n dots on each side, and is equal to the sum of the n natural numbers from 1 to n. The sequence of triangular numbers, starting with the 0th triangular number, is The triangular numbers are given by the following explicit formulas: where , does not mean division, but is the notation for a binomial coefficient.
Geometric progression
In mathematics, a geometric progression, also known as a geometric sequence, is a sequence of non-zero numbers where each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by a fixed, non-zero number called the common ratio. For example, the sequence 2, 6, 18, 54, ... is a geometric progression with common ratio 3. Similarly 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, ... is a geometric sequence with common ratio 1/2. Examples of a geometric sequence are powers rk of a fixed non-zero number r, such as 2k and 3k.
Brahmagupta
Brahmagupta (598 – 668 CE) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He is the author of two early works on mathematics and astronomy: the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (BSS, "correctly established doctrine of Brahma", dated 628), a theoretical treatise, and the Khaṇḍakhādyaka ("edible bite", dated 665), a more practical text. In 628 CE, Brahmagupta first described gravity as an attractive force, and used the term "gurutvākarṣaṇam (गुरुत्वाकर्षणम्)" in Sanskrit to describe it. Brahmagupta, according to his own statement, was born in 598 CE.