Math Terminology Question
Friday, February 9th, 2007 10:10 amNow that half of you have been scared away by the subject line:
Okay, numbers which are the sums of the natural numbers from 1 through [whatever] are called triangular numbers. You can see why if you do a little dot drawing of, say, the sum of the numbers from 1 through 4:
*
**
***
****
The above shows you that 10 is a nice triangular number, which you already knew if you've ever been bowling. Other triangular numbers include 36 (the sum of the numbers from 1 through 8) and 666 (sum of numbers from 1 through 36).
Here's my question: Is there a general name for the numbers made up of sums of evenly-spaced numbers? Like the sum of all the odd numbers between 15 and 71, or the sums of the numbers in this series:
-23
-12
-1
10
21
32
43
54
65
etc.?
I've long known how to figure out what the values of the numbers are, but have no idea what to call them.
Okay, numbers which are the sums of the natural numbers from 1 through [whatever] are called triangular numbers. You can see why if you do a little dot drawing of, say, the sum of the numbers from 1 through 4:
*
**
***
****
The above shows you that 10 is a nice triangular number, which you already knew if you've ever been bowling. Other triangular numbers include 36 (the sum of the numbers from 1 through 8) and 666 (sum of numbers from 1 through 36).
Here's my question: Is there a general name for the numbers made up of sums of evenly-spaced numbers? Like the sum of all the odd numbers between 15 and 71, or the sums of the numbers in this series:
-23
-12
-1
10
21
32
43
54
65
etc.?
I've long known how to figure out what the values of the numbers are, but have no idea what to call them.