Objective

After compellation of this lecture students will be able to know:

1. What percentage is.
2. Compute and solve problems using sequence and series.
3. Understand and solve problems involving arithmetic and geometric progression.

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Outline
Title 1: Percentage
Title 2: Sequence
Title 3: Series
Title 4: Arithmetic Progression
Title 5: Geometric Progression

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Percentage
The word ‘percentage’ literally means ‘per cent’, i.e. per hundredth, so that
whenever we speak of of something, we simply mean the fraction of it.
Examples
a) 15% of 12
b) 75% of 1250
c) 24% of $580
d) An investment rises from $2500 to $3375. Express the increase as a percentage of
the original.
e) At the beginning of a year, the population of a small village is 8400. If the annual
rise in population is 12%, find the population at the end of the year.

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 Sequences
A sequence is a set of numbers which are written in some particular order. For example, take the
number

1, 3, 5, 7, 9, …
Types of sequence
Finite and infinite sequences
Example
a) A sequence is given by the formula , for Write down the first five terms of this sequence.
b) A sequence is given by un=3n+5 for n=1,2,3… write down the first four terms of this sequence.
What is the 10th term?

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 Arithmetic Progression
Consider
8, 5, 2, -1, -4 …
It starts with a particular first term, and then to get successive terms we just add a fixed value to the
previous term. In the sequence we add -3 to get the next term, any sequence with this property is
called an arithmetic progression.
We can use algebraic notation to represent an arithmetic progression. We shall let “a” stand for the
first term of the sequence, and let “d” stand for the common difference between successive terms

Where a is the first term, and d is the common difference. The nth term will be

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 Series
A series is something we obtain from a sequence by adding all the terms together. For example,
suppose we have the sequence u1 , u2 , u3 ,..., un

The series we obtain from this

and we write Sn for the sum of these n terms. So, although the ideas of a ‘sequence’ and a ‘series’
are related, there is an important distinction between them.

For example, let us consider the sequence of numbers

So S1 is the sum of first term and its own S2 is the sum of first two terms, and so on

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Geometric Progressions
A geometric sequence is a sequence such that any element after the first is obtained by
multiplying the preceding element by a constant called the common ratio which is denoted by r.
The common ratio r is obtained by dividing any term by the preceding term, i.e.,

The geometric sequence is sometimes called the geometric progression or GP, for short.

For example, the sequence 1, 3, 9, 27, 81 is a geometric sequence. Note that after the first term,
the next term is obtained by multiplying the preceding element by 3.
To find the nth term of a geometric sequence we use the formula:

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 References
1.Reference 1
Basics of Business Mathematics by Obaidullah Zarifi