Alternating Sums
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
 - Subject: [mg340] Alternating Sums
 - From: Xah Y Lee <xyl10060 at fhda.edu>
 - Date: Mon, 19 Dec 1994 07:06:27 -0800 (PST)
 
This message is supposed to go to Jack Goldberg. I lost his email address.
Subject: Ways to construct alternating sums in mma.
Hi Jack. You may find the following code to construct mylist useful for 
testing purposes.
mylist =
    Table[
            ToExpression@StringJoin["a", ToString[i]], {i,1 , 12 }
    ]
I think the simplist is
 - Sum[ (-1)^i mylist[[i]], {i,1, Length[mylist]} ]
I made a study of all the contributions so far. I am amazed that the one 
using Fold is fastest.
 Xah Lee
 xyl10060 at tiptoe.fhda.edu
 Mountain View, CA.