Fact

20 Interesting and Amazing Facts About Maths

Words such as formula, equation and calculation sounds boring for those who hate Maths as a subject, whereas it is fun for those who have keen interest towards solving equations/problems.

October 14th is celebrated as World Maths Day. Let us know some interesting and amazing facts about Mathematics.

1. Zero ( 0 ) is the only number which can not be represented by Roman numerals.
2. What comes after a million, billion and trillion? A quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion and undecillion
3. Plus (+) and Minus (-) sign symbols were used as early as 1489 A.D
4. 2 and 5 are the only primes that end in 2 or 5
5. An icosagon is a shape with 20 sides

6. Among all shapes with the same perimeter a circle has the largest area.

7. Among all shapes with the same area circle has the shortest perimeter 
8. 40 when written "forty" is the only number with letters in alphabetical order, while "one" is the only one with letters in reverse order
9. 'FOUR' is the only number in the English language that is spelt with the same number of letters as the number itself 
10. From 0 to 1,000, the letter "A" only appears in 1,000 ("one thousand")
11. 12,345,678,987,654,321 is the product of 111,111,111 x 111,111,111. Notice the sequence of the numbers 1 to 9 and back to 1.

12. Have you ever noticed that the opposite sides a die always add up to seven (7)
13. Trigonometry is the study of the relationship between the angles of triangles and their sides
14. Abacus is considered the origin of the calculator
15. Here is an interesting trick to check divisibility of any number by number 3.A number is divisible by three if the sum of its digits is divisible by three (3)
16. Do you know the magic of no. nine (9)? Multiply any number with nine (9 ) and then sum all individual digits of the result (product) to make it single digit, the sum of all these individual digits would always be nine (9).
17. If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5...) the total is 5050
18. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second
19. Have you heard about a Palindrome Number? It is a number that reads the same backwards and forward, e.g. 12421
20. Have you heard about Fibonacci? It is the sequence of numbers wherein a number is the result of adding the two numbers before it! Here is an example: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on

Math Concepts

10 MATH CONCEPTS YOU CAN’T IGNORE

• Sets and set theory: A set is a collection of objects. The objects, called elements of the set, can be tangible (shoes, bobcats, people, jellybeans, and so forth) or intangible (fictional characters, ideas, numbers, and the like). Sets are such a simple and flexible way of organizing the world that you can define all of math in terms of them.
  Mathematicians first define sets very carefully to avoid weird problems – for example, a set can include another set, but it can’t include itself. After the whole concept of a set is well-defined, sets are used to define numbers and operations, such as addition and subtraction, which is the starting point for the math you already know and love.
• Prime numbers: A prime number is any counting number that has exactly two divisors (numbers that divide into it evenly) — 1 and the number itself. Prime numbers go on forever — that is, the list is infinite — but here are the first ten:

  2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 . . .

• Zero: Zero may look like a big nothing, but it’s actually one of the greatest inventions of all time. Like all inventions, it didn’t exist until someone thought of it. (The Greeks and Romans, who knew so much about math and logic, knew nothing about zero.)
  The concept of zero as a number arose independently in several different places. In South America, the number system that the Mayans used included a symbol for zero. And the Hindu-Arabic system used throughout most of the world today developed from an earlier Arabic system that used zero as a placeholder. In fact, zero isn’t really nothing — it’s simply a way to express nothing mathematically. And that’s really something.
• Pi (π): The symbol π (pronounced pie) is a Greek letter that stands for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Here’s the approximate value of π:

  π ≈ 3.1415926535…

• Although π is just a number — or, in algebraic terms, a constant — it’s important for several reasons:
  • Geometry just wouldn’t be the same without it. Circles are one of the most basic shapes in geometry, and you need π to measure the area and the circumference of a circle.
  • Pi is an irrational number, which means that no fraction that equals it exactly exists. Beyond this, π is a transcendental number, which means that it’s never the value of x in a polynomial equation (the most basic type of algebraic equation).
  • Pi is everywhere in math. It shows up constantly (no pun intended) where you least expect it. One example is trigonometry, the study of triangles. Triangles obviously aren’t circles, but trig uses circles to measure the size of angles, and you can’t swing a compass without hitting π.
• Equals signs and equations: The humble equals sign (=) is so common in math that it goes virtually unnoticed. But it represents the concept of equality — when one thing is mathematically the same as another — which is one of the most important math concepts ever created. A mathematical statement with an equals sign is an equation. The equals sign links two mathematical expressions that have the same value and provides a powerful way to connect expressions.
• The xy-graph: Before the xy-graph (also called the Cartesian coordinate system) was invented, algebra and geometry were studied for centuries as two separate and unrelated areas of math. Algebra was exclusively the study of equations, and geometry was solely the study of figures on the plane or in space. The graph, invented by French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, brought algebra and geometry together, enabling you to draw solutions to equations that include the variables x and y as points, lines, circles, and other geometric shapes on a graph.
• Functions: A function is a mathematical machine that takes in one number (called the input) and gives back exactly one other number (called the output). It’s kind of like a blender because what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. Suppose you invent a function called PlusOne that adds 1 to any number. So when you input the number 2, the number that gets outputted is 3:

  PlusOne(2) = 3

  Similarly, when you input the number 100, the number that gets outputted is 101:

  PlusOne(100) = 101

• The infinite: The very word infinity commands great power. So does the symbol for infinity (∞). Infinity is the very quality of endlessness. And yet mathematicians have tamed infinity to a great extent. In his invention of calculus, Sir Isaac Newton introduced the concept of a limit, which allows you to calculate what happens to numbers as they get very large and approach infinity.
• The real number line: Every point on the number line stands for a number. That sounds pretty obvious, but strange to say, this concept wasn’t fully understood for thousands of years. The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea posed this problem, called Zeno‘s Paradox: To walk across the room, you have to first walk half the distance across the room. Then you have to go half the remaining distance. After that, you have to go half the distance that still remains). This pattern continues forever, with each value being halved, which means you can never get to the other side of the room. Obviously, in the real world, you can and do walk across rooms all the time. But from the standpoint of math, Zeno’s Paradox and other similar paradoxes remained unanswered for about 2,000 years.
  The basic problem was this one: All the fractions listed in the preceding sequence are between 0 and 1 on the number line. And there are an infinite number of them. But how can you have an infinite number of numbers in a finite space? Mathematicians of the 19th century — Augustin Cauchy, Richard Dedekind, Karl Weierstrass, and Georg Cantor foremost among them — solved this paradox. The result was real analysis, the advanced mathematics of the real number line.
• The imaginary number i: The imaginary numbers(numbers that include the value i = √ – 1) are a set of numbers not found on the real number line. If that idea sounds unbelievable — where else would they be? — don’t worry: For thousands of years, mathematicians didn’t believe in them, either. But real-world applications in electronics, particle physics, and many other areas of science have turned skeptics into believers. So if your summer plans include wiring your secret underground lab or building a flux capacitor for your time machine — or maybe just studying to get a degree in electrical engineering — you’ll find that imaginary numbers are too useful to be ignored.