What Are Sequences?

Math is often the most fun when it acts like a puzzle to be solved. The branch of math where this is the most true involves sequences. Get an introduction to the basics and important vocabulary, as well as learn where sequences appear in nature!

What Are Sequences?

Sitting in my first college math class at UC Santa Cruz, I was asked by the professor, what is math? I had never really thought about that before and didn't have an answer, but eventually the class came up with a definition that I really liked and have never forgot: math is the study of patterns. While this is true about all areas of math, the branch of math where this is the most obvious is called sequences.

A sequence is just a set of things (usually numbers) that make a pattern. We could have a simple sequence like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… or a more complicated one like 5, 10, 20, 40, 80… But no matter whether the sequence is simple or complicated, having an agreed upon set of vocabulary is going to be really important.

Looking at our first two examples, you'll notice that I put a '…' at the end of the sequence. This implies that each sequence is an infinite sequence and never stops. But we can also have finite sequences that only have a set number of entries; -10, -5, 0, 5 for example. The sequence stops after we come to the fourth entry.

Understanding Terms in a Sequence

Another one of the most basic things that should be understood about sequences is that they are made up of terms. Again, going back to one of our first examples, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80…, the pattern begins with the number 5, which means that the first term is 5. That makes the second term 10, the third term 20, the fourth term 40, and so on. Notice that I am using the letter a and then a 'subscript' to describe each term. That mean that a subscript 2 stands for the 2nd term, and a3 stands for the 3rd term and a4, the fourth term, and so on. This means that a25 would be the 25th term and we can even say a subscript n is the 'nth' term, and we're going to use this to mean any generic term. So it'll give me a rule that I can substitute a number in that will tell me any term that I want. We'll get into how to come up with these generic rules for the 'nth' term in later lessons.![sequence-terms.