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Nonagonal number

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by David Eppstein (talk | contribs) at 05:41, 6 February 2015 (Clarify what the pattern means, but this is too pointless a concept for me to be interested in taking the time to draw an illustration.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A nonagonal number is a figurate number that extends the concept of triangular and square numbers to the nonagon (a nine-sided polygon). However, unlike the triangular and square numbers, the patterns involved in the construction of nonagonal numbers are not rotationally symmetrical. Specifically, the nth nonagonal numbers counts the number of dots in a pattern of n nested nonagons, all sharing a common corner, where the ith nonagon in the pattern has sides made of i dots spaced one unit apart from each other. The nonagonal number for n is given by the formula:

The first few nonagonal numbers are:

1, 9, 24, 46, 75, 111, 154, 204, 261, 325, 396, 474, 559, 651, 750, 856, 969, 1089, 1216, 1350, 1491, 1639, 1794, 1956, 2125, 2301, 2484, 2674, 2871, 3075, 3286, 3504, 3729, 3961, 4200, 4446, 4699, 4959, 5226, 5500, 5781, 6069, 6364, 6666, 6975, 7291, 7614, 7944, 8281, 8625, 8976, 9334, 9699. (sequence A001106 in the OEIS)

The parity of nonagonal numbers follows the pattern odd-odd-even-even.

Letting N(n) give the nth nonagonal number and T(n) the nth triangular number,

Test for nonagonal numbers

If x is an integer, then n is the xth nonagonal number. If x is not an integer, then n is not nonagonal.