Table of Contents | Glossary
| Inductive Hypothesis | Inductive Step | |
A |
The Inductive Hypothesis says to assume the following is true.
The Inductive Step is to prove the following
If we check the base case at k = 1, we get:
Clearly, the base case is wrong but it may be helpful to try the rest of the proof. It may be possible that the base case is correct at a higher bound (like k = 4). The proof would be as follows
(We know this because it is
a summation
identity.)
After substituting the Inductive Hypothesis
This is not the correct answer. The correct answer has to be the exact form of the Inductive hypothesis. Where's the error? The error is in the inductive step. Remember that the inductive step means that you are testing the proposition at the next step. In this case, the proof checks the proposition at i = i + 1 rather than k = k + 1.
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