recurrences and scenarios (?) [how to question]

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff purple com>]

I want to evaluate a recurrence relation in gnumeric for several
different starting configurations.

As an example (never mind that this simple example can be done in
closed form), suppose I want to consider Fibonacci-like sequences, and
I want a table showing the initial starting values and the 8th
element of the resulting sequence.  The first line for the standard
Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) would look like

    1    1    21

Another line in the table might be

    1    3    47

Since the sequence is (1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, 47, ...).

It's easy to set up the recurrence as a table in gnumeric.  I'm not
clear how to make a table of different "scenarios" for the recurrence.
(I put "scenario" in quotes because I'm not sure this has anything to
do with gnumeric's not-very-documented scenario function.)


Extending this, I'd also like to have a four column table where
columns one and two are as above, column 3 tells which element of the
sequence I want, and column 4 is that element.  (I'm willing to have a
sufficiently large table somewhere.)

    1    1    8    21
    1    3    8    47
    1    3    6    18
    ...

Does anyone know if either of these is even possible in gnumeric?

Thanks much for any help or pointers.


BTW, since I'm here, thanks so much to the gnumeric developers.  It's
really one of the showcase apps for gnome and for linux when talking
to non-linux folks.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://jeff.purple.com/>          +1 215/837-2287
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B