The Symphony of Sequences
Unlocking the Pattern
Welcome, future engineer! Today, we are going to embark on a journey through a sequence that might look intimidating at first glance, but is actually a beautifully orchestrated pattern.
Imagine you are standing before a series of numbers: 7×8,10×10,13×12,16×14,…. At first, it looks like a chaotic jumble of products. But in the world of JEE, chaos is just a pattern waiting to be discovered.
The Detective's Lens
Deconstructing the Sequence
To solve this, we must act like detectives. Look closely at the first factor of each term: 7,10,13,16,….
Each number is exactly 3 greater than the one before it. This is a classic Arithmetic Progression (A.P.) with a first term a=7 and a common difference d=3.
The general term for this, using the formula
a+(n−1)d, is:
f1(n)=7+(n−1)3=3n+4
Now, let's turn our attention to the second factor: 8,10,12,14,…. This is another A.P. with a first term a=8 and a common difference d=2.
Its general term is:
f2(n)=8+(n−1)2=2n+6
The Architect's Blueprint
Building the General Term
Now that we have the building blocks, we can construct the general term of our sequence,
Tn. Since each term is the product of these two factors, we write:
Tn=(3n+4)(2n+6)
Before we rush into calculations, let's simplify this expression. Expanding the brackets, we get:
Tn=6n2+18n+8n+24=6n2+26n+24
This quadratic expression is the DNA of our sequence. Every single term, from the first to the tenth, follows this exact rule.
The Mathematician's Tool
The Power of Summation
We need the mean of the first 10 terms. To find the mean, we first need the total sum, S10=∑n=110Tn.
Using the linearity property of summations, we can distribute the sum across our quadratic expression:
S10=6n=1∑10n2+26n=1∑10n+24n=1∑101
This is where the magic happens. We pull our standard summation formulas from our toolkit:
1. ∑k=1nk2=6n(n+1)(2n+1)
2. ∑k=1nk=2n(n+1)
3. ∑k=1n1=n
Substituting
n=10, we get:
S10=6(610×11×21)+26(210×11)+24(10)
The Final Calculation
Bringing it Home
Watch the elegance of the math as the
6 in the first term cancels out perfectly! We are left with:
(10×11×21)+(13×10×11)+240
Factoring out
10×11 (which is
110), we get:
110(21+13)+240=110(34)+240=3740+240=3980
Finally, the mean is simply the sum divided by the number of terms:
Mean=103980=398
See? What started as a daunting sequence became a simple, elegant exercise in pattern recognition and algebraic manipulation. Keep this mindset, and no JEE problem will ever be too big for you to handle!