Comment on What are the most mindblowing fact in mathematics?

Evirisu@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

A simple one: Let's say you want to sum the numbers from 1 to 100. You could make the sum normally (1+2+3...) or you can rearrange the numbers in pairs: 1+100, 2+99, 3+98.... until 50+51 (50 pairs). So you will have 50 pairs and all of them sum 101 -> 101*50= 5050. There's a story who says that this method was discovered by Gauss when he was still a child in elementary school and their teacher asked them to sum the numbers.

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