Video Transcript
Complete the following pattern,
something, something, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and zero.
In this problem, we’re given a
pattern of numbers. And we’re asked to complete it by
thinking of the first two numbers that happen at the start. What do the numbers sound like when
we read them aloud? Eight, seven, six, five, they sound
like a countdown. The sort of thing you hear when a
rocket is about to take off. And that word can give us a clue as
to what the pattern is doing. It’s counting down.
Let’s draw a number line to see the
direction that we’re counting. The first number that we know of in
our pattern is eight. And from eight, we count to
seven. This is a count of one
backwards. From the number seven, we also then
count one backwards to get to the number six. And then, five, four, three, two,
one, and zero. This is a decreasing pattern, going
down by one each time.
So, what are the two numbers that
come before eight? Well, we know if we’re counting
backwards in ones, the number before eight is nine, nine, eight, seven, and so
on. The first number in our pattern is
a number that we will say before we count backwards to the number nine. The answer is 10, 10, nine, eight,
and so on. And so our completed pattern is 10,
nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
