As Galileo Galilei used to say: “The book of nature is written in the mathematical language” and that is why the discoveries of ancient Greek mathematicians such as Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes are even today used in the study of this fascinating science.
1. During the past century, we’ve made huge strides in the math world. In 1900, all the world’s mathematical knowledge could be written in about 80 books, today it would fill more than 100,000 books.
2. The decimal system requires ten digits since there are ten fingers available for counting and the first calculations were made with the fingers. The smallest number that exactly divisible by all the numbers from one to ten is 2520.
3. The ancient Babylonians used a use a base 60 number system, also known as “Sexagesimal”. That is why we have 60 minutes, 60 seconds, and 360 degrees in a full circle.
4. The first calculations of the “Pi” (π) were made in Ancient Egypt and Babylon about four thousand years ago, but the accuracy was limited to two or three decimal places. Haruka Iwao set a world record by calculating π to 31.4 trillion digits using Google cloud technology. Here’s the full mind-boggling number: 31,415,926,535,897 digits.
5. If we divide 1 by 998001, then we get the complete sequence from 000 to 999 in order.
6. The sum of all the numbers on the casino roulette wheel (from zero to 36) is a number – 666, which is the “Number of the Beast”.The fear of the number 666 is called hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. Also, if you write this number in Romans Numerals, it will look like DCLXVI, and it contains all numerals (except M – thousand) in descending order.
7. Few people pay attention to the fact that the Roman Numerals System does not have the number zero, which is not surprising since the system was developed for mostly knowing the price of goods, and to trade. Zero was first invented and used in India.
8. From school, teachers tell us that it is impossible to divide by zero, but few people know why. For example, we will take the number 7. Writing 7: 0 can be considered a reduction from 0 · x = 7. We need to find the number that after multiplying by 0 gives 7. The main quality of zero, which is also in its definition is that when multiplied by 0 we always get 0. Strictly speaking, there is no number that after multiplying by 0 will give something other than zero. So the expression has no meaning.
9. On 21 September 1997, a division by zero error on board the USS Yorktown (CG-48) Remote Data Base Manager brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship’s propulsion system to fail.
10. According to the birthday paradox in a group of twenty-three randomly chosen people, the probability that two people share the same birthday (numbers and months) will be exceeding 50%, and for a group of 57 people the probability is over 99%.
11. If you take your age and multiply it by seven, then multiply it by 1443. The result will be your age, repeated three times in a row.
12. If you have a pizza with a radius “Z” and a thickness “A”, then its volume = Pi · Z · Z · A. It is also interesting that the pizza can be divided up into eight equal sections in 3 attempts, and there are two ways to do this.
