The total number of plums that grow during each year on a certain plum

Hello fireagablast,

I do not think that any of the answers here have considered year 1 as year 0. Nothing has to be subtracted from the number of plums grown in the FIRST year because of the fact that it is the FIRST year.

Only when the tree completes its 365th (or 366th) day of existence will you say that its age is 1 year, right? There’s no concept really like year 0.
We need to subtract 1 from the number of plums grown in the 2nd year, because by then the tree would be a 1 year old ?

Many students get confused with this concept of what happens to the plums grown in the first year. You just don’t subtract anything from it because before the first year, the age of the tree was ZERO (the tree didn’t exist, did it?).

On a lighter note, the argument that the tree existed in a seed is for a different day ?

Hope that helps!