Hi, I'll answer anyway in case anyone else is curious. If it's only when n is odd, you'd have to do your induction jumping two at a time (so the induction step would go from k to k+2).
thanks, this helped me a lot. I just have a question. The problem i have was to prove n^2-1 is divisible by 4. I pretty much followed your steps but got stuck on (n^2-1)+(2n+1). I saw somewhere that they set it = to 4i +1 and than i guess i would move the 1 to cancel out the other one and get (n^2-1)+2n=4i which would prove that its divisible by 4. Is this right?
hey i think it said when n is odd or something, but doesn't matter now, thanks anyways
leonne12 2 years ago
Hi, I'll answer anyway in case anyone else is curious. If it's only when n is odd, you'd have to do your induction jumping two at a time (so the induction step would go from k to k+2).
TheMathsters 1 year ago
thanks, this helped me a lot. I just have a question. The problem i have was to prove n^2-1 is divisible by 4. I pretty much followed your steps but got stuck on (n^2-1)+(2n+1). I saw somewhere that they set it = to 4i +1 and than i guess i would move the 1 to cancel out the other one and get (n^2-1)+2n=4i which would prove that its divisible by 4. Is this right?
leonne12 2 years ago
Something is wrong here - n^2-1 is not always divisible by 4. Are you sure that's what you're trying to prove?
TheMathsters 2 years ago