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Jackson's Difference Fan

If, after constructing a Difference Table, no clear pattern emerges, turn the paper through an Angle of 60° and compute a new table. If necessary, repeat the process. Each Rotation reduces Powers by 1, so the sequence $\{k^n\}$ multiplied by any Polynomial in $n$ is reduced to 0s by a $k$-fold difference fan.


References

Conway, J. H. and Guy, R. K. ``Jackson's Difference Fans.'' In The Book of Numbers. New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 84-85, 1996.




© 1996-9 Eric W. Weisstein
1999-05-25