Trying to define a way to generate the terms of a sequence, and starting with the number 5, I found, surprisingly, that the way I used generated this sequence:

5, 8, 11, 5, 8, 11, 5, 8, 11, ...

And these 3 numbers repeat in this order indefinitely.

Define a simple way to generate this sequence.

I used sequence indexing starting with n=1 for 5, n=2 for 8, and n=3 for 11, and so forth.  Then my equation is

F(n)=5+3*[(n-1) mod 3]

F(1)=5+3*(0 mod 3)=5+3*0=5

F(2)=5+3*(1 mod 3)=5+3*1=8

F(3)=5+3*(2 mod 3)=5+3*2=11

F(4)=5+3*(3 mod 3)=5+3*0=5 again

and thus it repeats 

Posted by Daniel on 2009-03-07 14:09:34