Arithmetic Progression Series | Dataford Interview Questions

Victoria's Secret may use numeric sequences to model ranked positions or spacing in a product display. Given the first term and rules for how consecutive differences change, generate the complete sequence.

The difference between each pair of consecutive terms must itself form an arithmetic progression. Return the first count terms, including the starting value.

Formal Specification

Implement generate_series(start, first_difference, difference_step, count):

start: integer first term.
first_difference: integer difference between the first and second terms.
difference_step: integer added to the previous difference after each term.
count: non-negative integer number of terms to return.
Return a list of count integers.

For term generation, add the current difference to the latest term, then increase the difference by difference_step.

Constraints

0 <= count <= 100,000
-10^9 <= start <= 10^9
-10^9 <= first_difference <= 10^9
-10^9 <= difference_step <= 10^9
Return an empty list when count is 0

Function Signature

def generate_series(start, first_difference, difference_step, count):

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