✓ Question 2: 32
What number comes next?
Why, in question 2: What number comes next?
The answer is 32. Each number is double the previous one: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. The differences grow faster and faster because the rule is to multiply, not to add.
Doubling at each step
When each term is the previous one multiplied by the same number, the sequence is a geometric progression. To recognize it, divide each number by the previous one: if the result is always the same, you have found the rule.
Doubling grows very quickly. An old legend says that the inventor of chess asked as a reward for one grain of wheat on the first square of the board, two on the second, four on the third, and so on up to the last of the 64 squares.
It sounds like little, but the total number of grains would be a number with 20 digits, far more wheat than humanity has ever harvested in its entire history.
Following this question's sequence, after 32 would come 64 and 128. In just ten steps, starting from 1, the sequence already exceeds a thousand.
