Texas Instruments TI-73 - Manual (Page 32)

Patterns and Functions Activity 5: The Twin’s Towers
27
© 1998 T EXAS I NSTRUMENTS I NCORPORATED
3. Explain to students that the process they have been
using to find successive terms in a sequence of
numbers is called recursion. Recursion means that
each term is built from the term before it. This
recursive process allows students to solve more
complicated, real-life problems.
Wrap-up
Discuss the power of Ans with your students. You could
have solved all of the situations examined by making lists
of each sequence, term after term. With the power of
technology, terms can be generated much faster and
difficult real-world problems can be solved.
Assessment Suggestions
1 story 2 story 3 story
or
1 story 2 story 3 story
♦
Have students write the recursive pattern they would
use to generate how many blocks they need for each
tower.
♦
Ask students:
How many blocks do the following need: 1 story, 8
stories, 150 stories, 99 stories?
If you use the following number of blocks, what story
are you on: 56, 110, 221?