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552 8 Sequences and Series If someone asked you to list all natural numbers that are perfect squares, you might begin by writing 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36 But you would soon realize that it is impossible to actually list all the per- fect squares, since there are an infinite number of them. However, this collection of numbers can be represented in several different ways. One common method is to write 1, 4, 9, . . . , n2, . . . n N where N is the set of natural numbers. A list of numbers such as this is generally called a sequence. Sequences and related topics form the sub- ject matter of this chapter. One of the related topics involves a method of proof we have referred to several times earlier in this book+mathemati- cal induction. This method enables us to prove conjectures involving infi- nite sets of successive integers. SECTION 8-1 Sequences and Series • Sequences • Series In this section we introduce special notation and formulas for representing and gen- erating sequences and sums of sequences. • Sequences Consider the function f given by f (n) 2n 1