How to find the nth term of an arithmetic sequence - GRE Quantitative Reasoning

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Question

The first term in a sequence of integers is 2 and the second term is 10. All subsequent terms are the arithmetic mean of all of the preceding terms. What is the 39th term?

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Answer

The first term and second term average out to 6. So the third term is 6. Now add 6 to the preceding two terms and divide by 3 to get the average of the first three terms, which is the value of the 4th term. This, too, is 6 (18/3)—all terms after the 2nd are 6, including the 39th. Thus, the answer is 6.

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