Question

Find the sum of the first 12 terms of the sequence. Show all work for full credit.

Answer 1

The difference between each term is -5, i.e. we know one of our terms is -5n. Now we just need to adjust it to get u1 correct. At n=1, -5n would give us -5 therefore we need to add 6 to get to 1. This gives us our equation:

$\boxed{u_n=-5n+6}$

Now we can work out the sum easily (we can use an equation using the above but personally I prefer the other one as it's less prone to mistakes):
$S_n= \frac{n}{2}(2u_1+(n-1)d)$
We know n is 12, and we know u1 is 1, and we also know the difference is -5.

Substituting this in:
$S_{12}= \frac{12}{2}(2*1+(12-1)*-5)=6(2-55)=6*-53 \\ \boxed{S_{12}=-318}$