2
$\begingroup$

I am trying to help a friend of mine solve

$ a_n + 5 a_{n-1} + 6 a_{n-2} = 12n - 2(-1)^n$

Now the homogenous solution is easy to find, and one just needs to solve the equation $r^2 + 5r + 6 = 0$ Which has roots $r=-2$ and $r-3$, so the homogenous solution is

$A (-2)^n + B (-3)^n$

Which can be confirmed by putting it into the equation. Now usually I would guess that the particular solution was on the form

$h_p = (An + B) + C(-1)^n$

but this is clearly wrong, is there any other way to find the solution of the equation ?

  • 0
    And in what whay is that equal to $12n - 2(-1)^n$ ?2012-10-01

1 Answers 1

3

What you assumed for the particular solution is correct. However, if you do not want to deal with inhomogeneous difference equations and guessing your particular solution, then you can use the following technique to transform it to a homogeneous difference equation. Another efficient technique is the Z-transform technique.