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Does someone understand this math problem?

I was given the question:

Let A be the set of all numbers in the form of n over n + 2 (this n part was written in fraction form but my keyboard won't allow that at the moment)

Where n is a positive odd integer less than 50.

What is the product of all the numbers in A?

So I wrote out all of the odd possibilities of the fraction, and I am guessing there is multiplication involved, since the word product is mentioned. But I don't know where to go with this. Do I multiply the fractions together or just the numbers, am I supposed to make an improper fraction out of the numerators? Please only in detail answers, I want to know why and how, to be able to work the problem out. My main problem is the wording, I am a foreigner to these phrases and can't tell what the problem is even asking of me.

1 Answer

Relevance
  • Novy
    Lv 5
    8 years ago

    A is a set, or a collection, of numbers. Every number in this collection looks like n/(n+2) where n is a positive, odd integer less than 50. That means there is a number in A for when n=1, another for when n=3, another for when n=5, n=7, n=9, and so on, until n=49.

    The question, then, asks us to multiply all those numbers in A together.

    So:

    (1/(1+2)) * (3/(3+2)) * (5/(5+2)) * (7/(7+2)) * ... and so on

    I just solved it by making a simple spreadsheet of values of n (1, 3, 5, ..., 47, 49) and their corresponding values of n/(n+2) then multiplied all the n/(n+2) values together. Doing this, I get 0.0196078431372549. The number keeps going, most likely, but my computer doesn't bother past that point.

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