Sunday, April 21, 2013

What does the variable n usually represent in mathematics?

What does the variable n in mathematics usually mean?


The variable can mean many things.  


1)  Maybe the variable is used in an equation only to represent an unknown, such as:  `10 = 6n+4`


2)  The variable "n" can often be used to represent a number, or element in a sequence.  Often written as 


`a(n) = 4n+5 `


represents an arithmetic sequence of values where n represents the number of the element.



3) It is also used to represent integer elements of a set. So the set of even numbers has elements n= 2, n= 4, n=6, etc.

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