Quote:

What is the next number in this series:

1, 2, 9, 262144, ____



I don't know how the 1 was derived, perhaps by defining it, but the second number is 2 to the power of the number preceding it; the third number is 3 to the power of the number preceding it; the fourth number is 4 to the power of the number preceding it; so the fifth number would be 5 to the power of the number preceding it. Deriving the actual number is trivial, so I will leave that up to the reader. I can give you a big hint, though. It ends in 25.

TEd