Studying polygonal numbers with a TI-Nspire CAS

摘要

The following article contains excerpts from a task which first appeared in a generic CAS-active exploration teacher resource book (Dowsey, Flynn & Tynan, 2008). The task, suitable for students in Years 10-12 with only the early parts considered suitable for Year 10, encourages the use of a CAS to investigate some interesting properties of polygonal numbers. Later more demanding parts of the task can be attempted in a variety of ways, particularly with the diverse and powerful functionality of a TI-Nspire CAS.