Recurrence relation problem from CSAT

68 Views Asked by At

The problem given is as follows: (from CSAT, here, pg 3, Q11)

An organism is born on day $k = 1$ with 1 cell. During day $k = 2, 3,\dots$ the organism produces $\frac{k^2}{k−1}$ times more new cells than it produced on day $k − 1$. Give a simplified expression for the total of all its cells after $n$ days. [HINT:This is different to the number of new cells produced during day $n.$]

My attempt:

We can formulate a recurrence relation for this as:

$$T(n) = \frac{n^2}{n-1}T(n-1)$$

Expanding using iterative method,

$$T(n)  = \frac{n^2}{n-1}\times\frac{(n-1)^2}{n-2}\dots\frac{(n-k+1)^2}{n-k}T(n-k)$$.

We have the base case that $T(1) = 1$, therefore, $k = n-1$.

Substituting and performing basic manipulations, I got the answer as $n!n$.

So what we are required to calculate is $\sum_{i=1}^{n}i! \times i$.

However, this is where I got stuck. Is this the most simplified version or can it be further solved?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

Hint: You've done almost all of the work and as I see you are preparing for an exam:

The first few terms (for $n=1,2,3,4$) are $$1,5,23, 119$$

Do those numbers look familiar if you add $1$?

Induction should do the job.