An Engineer's Approach to a General Algorithm for Finding the Sum of Powers of Natural Numbers

Abstract

Convenient formulae for finding the sums of kth power of the first n natural numbers may be useful in some engineering applications. The formulae for k = 1, 2, and 3, are commonly found in the literature. In this paper, an attempt is made to develop a general algorithm for finding the sum for any positive integer value of k. The development of the algorithm is entirely an engineering approach, based purely on a simple geometric interpretation and does not involve any deep mathematics. This algorithm may be used to derive the formulae for different values of k. Some of the possible engineering applications of these formulae are also discussed.