Beat Gauss using R
There is a popular story about young Gauss. As a pupil, he had a lazy teacher who wanted to keep the classroom busy by having them add up the numbers 1 to 100. Gauss came up with an answer almost instantaneously, 5050. On the spot, he had developed a formula for calculating the sum of an arithmetic series. There are more general formulas for calculating the sum of an arithmetic series with different starting values and increments. Instead of deriving such a formula, why not use R to calculate the sum of a sequence?
This exercise is part of the course
Intermediate R
Exercise instructions
- Using the function
seq(), create a sequence that ranges from 1 to 500 in increments of 3. Assign the resulting vector to a variableseq1. - Again with the function
seq(), create a sequence that ranges from 1200 to 900 in increments of -7. Assign it to a variableseq2. - Calculate the total sum of the sequences, either by using the
sum()function twice and adding the two results, or by first concatenating the sequences and then using thesum()function once. Print the result to the console.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Create first sequence: seq1
# Create second sequence: seq2
# Calculate total sum of the sequences