# Understand the problem

A sequence of natural numbers is constructed by listing the first $4$, then skipping one, listing the next $5$, skipping $2$, listing $6$, skipping $3$, and, on the $n$th iteration, listing $n+3$ and skipping $n$. The sequence begins $1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,13$. What is the $500,\!000$th number in the sequence ?

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.0"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="3.25" custom_padding="|||" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_accordion open_toggle_text_color="#0c71c3" _builder_version="4.0" toggle_font="||||||||" body_font="Raleway||||||||" text_orientation="center" custom_margin="10px||10px"][et_pb_accordion_item title="Source of the problem" open="on" _builder_version="4.0"]American Mathematics Competition [/et_pb_accordion_item][et_pb_accordion_item title="Topic" _builder_version="4.0" open="off"]

Number Theory, Sequences

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7/10

[/et_pb_accordion_item][et_pb_accordion_item title="Suggested Book" _builder_version="3.29.2" open="off"]Challenges and Thrills of Pre-College Mathematics

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_tabs active_tab_background_color="#0c71c3" inactive_tab_background_color="#000000" _builder_version="4.0" tab_text_color="#ffffff" tab_font="||||||||" background_color="#ffffff" custom_padding="||153px|25px||"][et_pb_tab title="Hint 0" _builder_version="3.22.4"]You could give it a thought first...are you sure you really need a hint ?

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Stuck...? Well, don't worry. The key to solving this problem is not thinking too much about the skips. We can start with natural numbers, from 1 to 500,000. So, a useful strategy could be to find how many numbers we have actually skipped, n and then add them back accordingly.  So, now could you take things on from here ?

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If you're a tad bit doubtful of where we're heading even now, well no problem. Clearly, we can say 999.(1000) / 2   < 500,000 < 1000.(1001) / 2 So, now can you find out how many blocks of gaps we have in the sequence ?

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Now see, finding the blocks of gaps easy ! There's just one small thing you would have to recall. We began the count from 4...so now, the number of skipped blocks in the sequence = 999 - 3 = 996.  Now to find n, from the number of blocks , we have =  (996.997) / 2 = 496,506 This stands for the number of numbers we skipped. Now concluding this is fairly easy...could you try that out yourself ?

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What remains for us to do is to add back those skipped numbers to the count, 500,000 to obtain the final answer. That gives us = 500000 +496506 = 996506

And we are done !