Finding A Formula For The First Odd n Fibonacci Numbers

Here are the sums of the first few odd Fibonacci numbers:

$$\begin{align} &f_1=1 \\ &f_1 + f_3 = 3 \\ &f_1 + f_3 + f_5 = 8 \\ &f_1 + f_3 +f_5 + f_7 = 21 \end{align}$$

And here are the first few even Fibonacci numbers:

$$\begin{align} f_2 &=1 \\ f_4 &= 3 \\ f_6 &= 8 \\ f_8 &= 21 \end{align}$$

This seems to suggest that:

$$ \sum^n_{k=1} f_{2k-1} = f_{2n} $$

To prove the above statment for all cases, we can use proof by induction. We already have some base cases. Now we need the induction step:

$$\begin{align} \sum^{n+1}_{k=1} f_{2k-1} &= \sum^n_{k=1} f_{2k-1} + f_{2(n+1)-1} \\ &= f_{2n} + f_{2n+1} \end{align}$$

By definition \(f_{2n-1} = f_{2n} + f_{2n+1}\). This means:

$$\begin{align} \sum^{n+1}_{k=1} f_{2k-1} &= f_{2n-1} \\ &= f_{2(n+1)-1} \end{align}$$

This shows that our statement works for \(n+1\) as well.

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