Question

Can someone help? I’m completely blanking

Answer 1

The pattern is adding 2 stars on top of the previous figure, so figure number 4 would look like this:

* *

* *

* *

* *

Since the pattern is adding 2 stars every time, the explicit formula (for the number of stars) would be

$f(n)=2n$

Since when n=1, i.e. figure 1, we have 2*1=2 stars

when n=2, i.e. figure 2, we have 2*2=4 stars

when n=3, i.e. figure 3, we have 2*3=6 stars

and so on.

The recursive formula lays on the fact that we add 2 stars to the previous figure, which means that the fomula is

$f_n = f_{n-1}+2$

In fact, what we just wrote is simply "the number of stars at a given iteration is the number of stars at the previous iteration, plus 2.