Self-Study
Number sequences and problem solving

Number sequences
      Number sequences are a set of numbers with a pattern like: 2,5,8,11,14...and so on. The pattern is adding three to every number. Identifying such pattern can help us in certain mathematics calculations so that our calculations can be made much easier and also speed up our calculations and sometimes maybe even solve our mathematics problem.
Example( This is taken from the textbook but explained in a different way by me):

A group of 20 people goes to a restaurant for a buffet dinner. They request to be seated at the same table. The restaurant has only small square tables that can be joined end to end to form a large long table. If each small table can seat only one person on each side, how many of such small tables are needed to seat this group of people?

We know that one table can seat four people.

We can see from the diagram that every table added can seat another two people.
this is one way we can the answer:
<one table>    <additional table>
 4(people)     +  2(people)= 6   add another two to it and it becomes 8.
adding two to the numbers one time means one table.
ans: 9tables
we add the numbers until it reaches 20 then we count back and see how many times we added 2 and then we know how many tables there are.
This is using a bit of number sequences to help us as it includes adding two to each number.
 

Fibonacci
Fibonacci is a number sequence which is like this
 
0+1 1+1  1+2   2+3   3+5  5+8
   1   2   3   5   8 13

Fibonacci provide many examples that link math with music

We can see that there are the numbers 2, 3, 5, 8 , 13 and they are all in order and are in the Fibonacci sequences.
 

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Problem Solving