Re: Stupid Arithmetic Tricks
On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 12:57:45PM +0100, Erich Schubert wrote:
> > If I'm given a long column of one or two-digit numbers to add up (on
> > paper), I go down the ones column and strike out all complementary pairs
>
> Well, that's the trick how Gauss is said to have surprised his
> teacher... because he was so fast in calculating, his teacher gave him
> the task to add up all numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss just formed pairs
> that sum up to one hundred... some story often told in school here.
> Basically you apply some sorting before calculating. You'll soon start
> striking out 12, 32, 56, too. Know your nine there, too...
A little knowledge of series tells me to apply n*(n+1)/2 to sum an arithmetic
progression of common difference 1, starting at 1. This seems even quicker:
100*101/2 becomes 5*101*10 becomes 505*10 = 5050.
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; Matthew Danish <mdanish@andrew.cmu.edu>
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