Moonlight Flower wrote:
I'm a bit stuck on my math. It's rather simple stuff, but I'm re-taking the course and forgot most of it - and the textbook isn't helping much.
I need to find the mean (average) of the following data set:
The first 50 positive multiples of 3
and the two equations I'm given to use are
Sn = n * [2a + (n + 1) * d] / 2
and
Sn = a * (r^n - 1) / r - 1
But I can't remember what equation to use, or what numbers to use for each variable. I think n would = 3 here, but I'm in need of a description of how to find these numbers - if anyone remembers. xD; or even if someone just has a site to point me to that'd help me figure it out.
The formulas you've provided are for the sums of arithmetic (n'th term = a+d*(n-1)) and geometric (n'th term = a*r^(n-1)) series, in that order.
The sequence you're looking at, the first 50 positive multiples of 3 is arithmetic (3, 6, 9 ...). So the nth term would be:
u
n = 3n = 3 + 3 * (n-1)
The mean of an arithmetic sequence can be found by adding the minimum and maximum values and dividing by 2; so you have:
Mean = (u
min + u
max) / 2
Mean = (a + (a + d*(n-1)) / 2
Mean = (2a + d*(n-1)) / 2 [a is the first number of your sequence (3), n is the number of numbers in the sequence (50), and d is the difference between two subsequent numbers (3)]
Mean = (6 + 3*49) / 2 = (153 / 2) = 76.5