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Time for your daily dose of shmoop… Find the 5th number in this series: 0, -1,
-3, -7… And here are the potential answers…
OK so what is this question asking?
Well, there’s clearly a pattern we’re being asked to observe…
And here, we get exponentially more negative as we go along. Sorta like this guy.
We are just being asked to find the number that comes after negative 7 and we’re travelling
left from 0 in steps of 1, 2, then 4…
The pattern is “2 times… something…” Looks like 2 times the previous number, then
minus 1…
…so if we keep going, we’re at minus 7 times 2 which is minus 14…
…then subtract 1 and we have minus 15.
Answer A
Hopefully you got that right. We don’t want to take any chances at upsetting Mr. Black.