Let be a sequence of positive real numbers such that , and for all integers Find the sum of all possible values of
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
The closed form for a n is of the form c 1 ( 1 ) n + c 2 ( − 2 ) n + c 3 ( − 3 ) n for some constants c 1 , c 2 , and c 3 . I won't go into much detail on how I got that, but it involves manipulating the recursion. For n = 2 0 1 4 , we get a 2 0 1 4 = 2 0 1 4 = c 1 ( 1 ) 2 0 1 4 + c 2 ( − 2 ) 2 0 1 4 + c 3 ( − 3 ) 2 0 1 4 . Now, notice the c 2 ( − 2 ) n and c 3 ( − 3 ) n terms in our closed form. If c 2 and/or c 3 are nonzero, then for some non-negative integer n , a n will be negative. (For example, for c 2 = 1 and c 3 = − 1 0 0 , n = 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 . . . with a large number of 0 s will guarantee that a n is negative.) Since all a n are positive, we must have c 2 = c 3 = 0 , so c 1 ( 1 ) n + c 2 ( − 2 ) n + c 3 ( − 3 ) n = c 1 = 2 0 1 4 = a n . Thus, a 1 0 0 0 0 can only be 2 0 1 4 .