Thread: Fun with words... or not

The circulation, in thousands of subscriptions, of a new magazine n months after its introduction can be approximated by

circulation = ~(n2-n+1)

Find, to the nearest hundred, the expected circulation after 12 months.

I am having trouble with this one any ideas ?

Originally Posted by AlgebraicallyChallenged

The circulation, in thousands of subscriptions, of a new magazine n months after its introduction can be approximated by

circulation = ~(n2-n+1)

Find, to the nearest hundred, the expected circulation after 12 months.

I am having trouble with this one any ideas ?

The number of subscriptions is given by (n^2 -n+1)^(1/2), correct? Where n is the number of months. So, we plug in the given months, 12, into the equation and get (144 - 11)^(1/2)= 11.5325626. However, we need to multiply this number by 1000 because our answer is in thousands. The answer is 11532.5626. Round this to the nearest hundreds and we get 11500 subscriptions per month.