Curious and interesting facts about mathematics. Interesting facts in mathematics (Grade 3) on the topic: Interesting facts about mathematics

Focused on computing. However, this does not mean at all that everything in this kingdom is boring and boring. By no means! Despite the seriousness of the teaching, surprising and interesting facts about mathematics appear. And you can find them almost anywhere in the world.

Surprising but true

Consider the most interesting facts about mathematics concerning our country, as well as
western states. As you know, we have zero does not belong to the set of natural numbers. But not everyone thinks so: in the West it is referred to as natural numbers.

Or here's another example. Many of us live and do not suspect that "now" flies away from them quite quickly - 86,400 times a day. This number unit was not given a name, but they found out how long a moment lasts: about a hundredth of a second.

As it turned out, some peoples are very superstitious about certain numbers. For example, in Japan and China there is nothing with the number four, since this number represents death itself. Therefore, it is not customary to use it even in hotels.

In Israel, everything that is somehow connected with Christianity is rejected, so they do not write the plus sign in mathematical calculations, but get by with just an inverted "T".

And in gambling(casino roulette) the number 666 is the sum of all the values ​​that are present on the reel.

Entertaining examples

Every person knows about school bench What do you get when you add up all the numbers from 1 to 10? You forgot? Don't worry, remember: the sum will be 54.

Those people who are friends with the exact sciences know that if you add up all the values ​​​​from 1 to 100, you get a very impressive number - 5050.

You can make a simple calculation and see what happens if you enter the first 3 digits of your phone number (without an operator) into the calculator, multiply them by 80, add 1, then you need to multiply all this by 250, add the last 4 digits of your number twice, subtract 250, divide by 2. The answer is an amazing number. It will blow your mind, we assure you!

Ig Nobel Prize

Everyone knows what is Nobel Prize to whom and for what it is awarded. But besides it, there is another unusual award. It is called the Ig Nobel Prize. Who can become a laureate? It is awarded simultaneously with the Nobel Prize, but, unlike famous award, the Shnobel Prize is given for those ingenious projects that are on this moment cannot be translated into reality. Or they never will, because they are absurd. In 2009, this award was presented to veterans who proved that a cow with a nickname gives more milk than one that does not have a name.

Experiment

Surprisingly, scientists conducted an experiment that shows what distance
on the axis represent in their imagination people who do not have education. Among the subjects were representatives from the Munduruku tribe and American schoolchildren who cannot count. They were given a set number of dots to look at, and after some time were asked to indicate where the numbers from one to ten were. It turned out that for most people, the smallest values ​​have long distances.

As it turned out, in the field of cooking, there are also interesting facts about mathematics. For example, a cake can be cut in two ways into eight even pieces.

Many people do not know how to check the authenticity of a euro bill. But this is relatively easy to do. It is necessary to take a letter from the serial sign and substitute a number (serial number in the alphabet) instead of it. Then you need to add the resulting number with the rest of the values. And after that, add up the numbers of the result until one value comes out - 8. It turns out that such interesting facts about mathematics can help verify the authenticity of the bills.

If we take several figures (among which there will be a circle) with the same perimeters, then after a series of calculations it turns out that the circle has the largest area. It is impossible not to notice that if you calculate the perimeter of the circle and other figures, then it will remain in the minority. Yes, it has the smallest perimeter.

about mathematics

Today, all people use the decimal system, but this was not always the case. At a time when our ancestors were just beginning to count, they used a system of 20 characters, using their fingers and toes for this. This trend has since changed. For example, in Babylon, people counted not only the fingers, but also the phalanges, which gave out the number twelve.

Something else belongs to the section "Fun and interesting facts about mathematics." As far as everyone knows, the Romans were a smart people. They were good at counting. However, there was one flaw - the number "0". It is now used everywhere, but in Rome it was not. Don't believe? But in vain! Confirmation of the above is the fact that zero cannot be written by any of the known Roman numbers!

Albert Einstein was gifted from childhood. But, having a talent in mathematics, he could not enter the Zurich Polytechnic School due to the fact that he did not manage to score the required number of points in other subjects. By the way, such features of development are noted in many geniuses. Soon, having improved his knowledge in the necessary disciplines, Einstein was allowed to study at this school.

There are other interesting facts about famous mathematicians. At an American university, a graduate student was able to solve two problems that had previously been considered unanswerable. The fact is that the future mathematician was a little late for the lesson. After that, he wrote off these tasks from the board, deciding that they were homework. They seemed complicated, but in a few days George managed to close the question, which scientists have been thinking about for years.

As it turned out, mathematics can be learned not only at school or at the institute, but also at home, looking at wallpapers. In any case, it worked out
It so happened that as a child she looked in her room at the lecture sheets on integral and differential calculation. And the thing is that there simply wasn’t enough wallpaper for the nursery. And thank God!

Surprisingly, with the help of mathematics, you can find out when the last day of your stay on earth will come. Abraham de Moivre (a scientist from Britain) managed to achieve this through He noticed that he began to sleep 15 minutes more every day. What came of it? Abraham made a progression that indicated the date when he would have to sleep 24 hours a day. It turned out to be November 27, 1754. Just like that he died.

Today, we will share with you interesting and unusual facts from the world of this serious science. There is a place for the frivolous or simply fascinating in any exact science. The main thing is the desire to find it ...

The English mathematician Abraham de Moivre, in his old age, once discovered that the duration of his sleep was growing by 15 minutes a day. Compiling arithmetic progression, he determined the date when it would reach 24 hours - November 27, 1754. On this day he died.
Religious Jews try to avoid Christian symbols and generally signs that look like a cross. For example, students in some Israeli schools instead of the plus sign write a sign that repeats the inverted letter "t".
The authenticity of a euro banknote can be verified by its serial number of letters and eleven digits. You need to replace the letter with its serial number in English alphabet, add this number to the rest, then add the digits of the result until we get one digit.

If this number is 8, then the bill is genuine. Another way to check is to add numbers like this, but without a letter. The result of one letter and number must correspond to a certain country, since the euro is printed in different countries. For example, for Germany it is X2.
The word "algebra" sounds the same in all languages ​​of the world. It is of Arabic origin, and was introduced into use by the great mathematician Central Asia late 8th - early 9th century Mahammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. His mathematical treatise was called "Aljebr wal muqabala", from the first word of which the international name of science - algebra - originated.
There is an opinion that Alfred Nobel did not include mathematics in the list of disciplines of his prize due to the fact that his wife cheated on him with a mathematician. In fact, Nobel never married. The real reason Nobel's disregard for mathematics is unknown, but there are several suggestions. For example, at that time there was already a prize in mathematics from the Swedish king. Another is that mathematicians do not make important inventions for humanity, since this science is purely theoretical.
The Reuleaux triangle is geometric figure, formed by the intersection of three equal circles of radius a with centers at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with side a. A drill made on the basis of the Reuleaux triangle allows you to drill square holes (with an inaccuracy of 2%).

In Russian mathematical literature, zero is not a natural number, but in Western literature, on the contrary, it belongs to the set of natural numbers.

The sum of all the numbers on the casino roulette is equal to the number of the devil - 666.
In the state of Indiana in 1897, a bill was passed legislating the value of pi to be 3.2. This bill did not become law due to the timely intervention of a university professor.
Sofia Kovalevskaya got acquainted with mathematics in early childhood when there was not enough wallpaper for her room, instead of which sheets with Ostrogradsky's lectures on differential and integral calculus were pasted.

In order to be able to do science, Sofya Kovalevskaya had to enter into a fictitious marriage and leave Russia. At that time, Russian universities simply did not accept women, and in order to emigrate, a girl had to have the consent of her father or husband. Since Sophia's father was categorically against it, she married a young scientist Vladimir Kovalevsky. Although in the end their marriage became actual, and they had a daughter.
The decimal number system we use arose due to the fact that a person has 10 fingers on his hands. The ability for abstract counting did not appear in people immediately, and it turned out to be most convenient to use fingers for counting. The Mayan civilization, and independently of them, the Chukchi historically used the decimal number system, using not only the fingers, but also the toes. The basis of the duodecimal and sexagesimal systems common in ancient Sumer and Babylon was also the use of hands: the phalanges of other fingers of the palm, the number of which is 12, were counted with the thumb.
In many sources, often with the aim of encouraging poorly performing students, there is an assertion that Einstein failed in mathematics at school or, moreover, studied badly in all subjects. In fact, everything was not so: Albert was still in early age began to show talent in mathematics and knew it far beyond the school curriculum.

Later, Einstein was unable to enter the ETH Zurich, showing the highest results in physics and mathematics, but not getting the required number of points in other disciplines. Pulling up these subjects, he became a student of this institution a year later at the age of 17.
One familiar lady asked Einstein to call her, but warned that her phone number was very difficult to remember: - 24-361. Remember? Repeat! Surprised Einstein answered: — Of course, I remember! Two dozen and 19 squared.
Every time you shuffle a deck, you create a sequence of cards that is very a high degree probability has never existed in the universe. The number of combinations in a standard playing deck is 52!, or 8×1067. To achieve at least a 50% chance of getting a combination a second time, you need to make 9x1033 shuffles. And if you hypothetically force the entire population of the planet over the past 500 years to continuously interfere with cards and receive a new deck every second, you will end up with no more than 1020 different sequences.
Leonardo da Vinci derived the rule that the square of the diameter of a tree trunk is equal to the sum of the squares of the diameters of the branches, taken at a common fixed height. Later studies confirmed it with only one difference - the degree in the formula is not necessarily equal to 2, but lies in the range from 1.8 to 2.3. It was traditionally believed that this pattern is due to the fact that a tree with such a structure optimal mechanism supplying branches with nutrients. However, in 2010, the American physicist Christoph Elloy found a simpler mechanical explanation for the phenomenon: if we consider a tree as a fractal, then Leonardo's law minimizes the likelihood of breaking branches under the influence of wind.
Ants are able to explain to each other the way to food, they can count and perform simple arithmetic operations. For example, when a scout ant finds food in a specially designed maze, it returns and explains how to get to it to other ants.

If at this time the labyrinth is replaced with a similar one, that is, the pheromone trail is removed, the scout's relatives will still find food. In another experiment, the scout searches in a maze of many identical branches, and after his explanations, other insects immediately run to the designated branch. And if you first accustom the scout to the fact that food is more likely to be in 10, 20, and so on branches, the ants take them as basic and begin to navigate by adding or subtracting the desired number from them, that is, they use a system similar to Roman numerals.
In February 1992, the Virginia 6 out of 44 lottery draw took place, where the jackpot was $27 million. The number of all possible combinations in this kind of lottery was just over 7 million, and each ticket cost $1. Entrepreneurial people from Australia created a fund by raising $3,000 from 2,500 people, bought the required number of forms and manually filled them out with various combinations of numbers, receiving a triple profit after paying taxes.
Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest theoretical physicists and popularizer of science. In a story about himself, Hawking mentioned that he became a professor of mathematics, having not received any mathematical education since high school. When Hawking began teaching mathematics at Oxford, he read his textbook two weeks ahead of his own students.

Laboratory studies have shown that bees can choose optimal route. After localizing the flowers placed in different places, the bee makes a flight and returns in such a way that the final path is the shortest. Thus, these insects effectively cope with the classic “traveling salesman problem” from computer science, which modern computers, depending on the number of points, can spend more than one day to solve.
There is Benford's mathematical law, which states that the distribution of the first digits in the numbers of any data sets from real world unevenly. Numbers from 1 to 4 in such sets (namely, birth or death statistics, house numbers, etc.) in the first position are much more common than numbers from 5 to 9. Practical use of this law lies in the fact that it can be used to check the accuracy of accounting and financial data, election results, and much more. In some US states, the non-compliance of data with Benford's law is even formal evidence in court.
There are many parables about how one person offers another to pay him for some service as follows: he will put one grain of rice on the first cell of the chessboard, two on the second, and so on: each next cell is twice as much as the previous one. As a result, he who pays in this way is bound to be ruined. This is not surprising: it is estimated that the total weight of rice will be more than 460 billion tons.

Pi has two unofficial holidays. The first is March 14, because this day in America is written as 3.14. The second is July 22, which is written 22/7 in the European format, and the value of such a fraction is a fairly popular approximate value of pi.
American mathematician George Danzig, being a graduate student at the university, one day was late for a lesson and mistook the equations written on the blackboard for homework. It seemed to him more complicated than usual, but after a few days he was able to complete it. It turned out that he solved two "unsolvable" problems in statistics that many scientists struggled with.
Among all figures with the same perimeter, the circle will have the largest area. Conversely, among all figures with the same area, the circle will have the smallest perimeter.
In fact, moment is a unit of time that lasts about a hundredth of a second.
René Descartes introduced the terms "real number" and "imaginary number" into mathematics in 1637.
The cake can be cut into eight equal parts with three touches of the knife. Moreover, there are two ways to do this.

In a group of 23 or more people, the probability that the birthday of two of them will be the same is more than 50 percent, and in a group of 60 people or more, the probability is about 99 percent.
If you multiply your age by 7, then multiply by 1443, the result is your age written three times in a row.
In mathematics, there are: braid theory, game theory and knot theory.
Zero "0" is the only number that cannot be written in Roman numerals.
The maximum number that can be written in Roman numerals without violating Schwartzman's rules (rules for writing Roman numerals) is 3999 (MMMCMXCIX) - you cannot write more than three digits in a row
The equal sign "=" was first used by the British Robert Record in 1557. He wrote that there are no more identical objects in the world than two equal and parallel segments.
The sum of all numbers from one to one hundred is 5050.
In the Taiwanese city of Taipei, residents are allowed to omit the number four, because in Chinese the word is identical to the word "death." For this reason, many buildings in the city do not have a fourth floor.

The number thirteen is supposedly considered unlucky due to biblical story about the Last Supper, where exactly thirteen people were present. And the thirteenth was Judas Iscariot.
A little-known mathematician from Britain devoted most of his life to the study of the laws of logic. His name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. This name is not known to such a large number of people, but the pseudonym under which he wrote his literary masterpieces is known - Lewis Carroll.
Greek Hepatia is considered the first female mathematician in history. She lived in IV-V centuries in Egyptian Alexandria.
The results of a recent study show that in areas of knowledge dominated by men, the weaker sex tends to disguise typically feminine qualities in order to look more convincing. For example, female mathematicians prefer to go without makeup.
Did you know that one of the curved lines is called "Agnese Curl" after the world's first female professor of mathematics Maria Gaetano Agnese?
Lermontov, being versatile talented person, besides literary creativity was a good artist and loved math. Elements of higher mathematics, analytic geometry, the principles of differential and integral calculus fascinated Lermontov throughout his life. He always carried with him a mathematics textbook by the French author Bezout.

In the 18th century, the chess machine of a Hungarian mechanic was popular Wolfgang von Kempelen, who showed his car at the Austrian and Russian courts, and then demonstrated it publicly in Paris and London. Napoleon I played with this machine, sure that he was measuring his strength with the machine. In reality, no chess machine operated automatically. A skillful living chess player was hiding inside, who moved the pieces. In the middle of the last century, the famous automaton came to America and ended its existence there during a fire in Philadelphia.
IN chess game out of 40 moves, the number of game development options can exceed the number of atoms in outer space. After all, a huge number of options are possible - 1.5 by 10 to the 128th degree.
Napoleon Bonaparte wrote mathematical works. And one geometric fact is called "Napoleon's Problem"
The leaves on the branch of the plant are always arranged in a strict order, separated from each other by a certain angle clockwise or counterclockwise. The value of the angle is different for different plants, but it can always be described by a fraction, in the numerator and denominator of which are numbers from the Fibonacci series. For example, for beech, this angle is 1/3, or 120 °, for oak and apricot - 2/5, for pear and poplar - 3/8, for willow and almond - 5/13, etc. This arrangement allows the leaves to most effectively receive moisture and sunlight.
In Rus', in the old days, a bucket (about 12 liters), a shtof (a tenth of a bucket) were used as units of measurement. In the USA, England and other countries, a barrel (about 159 liters), a gallon (about 4 liters), a bushel (about 36 liters), a pint (from 470 to 568 cubic centimeters) are used.

Small old Russian measures of length - span and elbow.
Span is the distance between the elongated large and index fingers hands at their greatest distance (span size ranged from 19 cm to 23 cm). They say "Don't give up a single inch of land", meaning not to give up, not to give up even the smallest part of your land. Oh very smart person say: "Seven spans in the forehead."
Elbow- this is the distance from the end of the extended middle finger to the elbow bend (the size of the elbow ranged from 38 cm to 46 cm and corresponded to two spans). The proverb has been preserved: “He is from a fingernail, and a beard is from an elbow.”
Quadratic equations were created in the XI century in India. The largest number used in India was 10 to the 53rd power, while the Greeks and Romans only operated on numbers to the 6th power.
Probably everyone noticed on themselves and on those around them that among the numbers there are favorites for which we have a special predilection. We, for example, are very fond of "round numbers", i.e., ending in 0 or 5. Predilection for certain numbers, their preference for others, is embedded in human nature much deeper than is usually thought. In this respect, the tastes of not only Europeans and their ancestors, for example, the ancient Romans, converge, but even the primitive peoples of other parts of the world.
Every census usually sees an overabundance of people whose age ends in 5 or 0; there are far more of them than there should be. The reason lies, of course, in the fact that people do not remember exactly how old they are and, showing their age, involuntarily “round” the years. It is remarkable that a similar predominance of "round" ages is also observed on the grave monuments of the ancient Romans.
We consider negative numbers to be something natural, but this was far from always the case.
For the first time negative numbers were legalized in China in the III century, but were used only for exceptional cases, as they were considered, in general, meaningless. A little later, negative numbers began to be used in India to denote debts, but they did not take root to the west - the famous Diophantus of Alexandria argued that the equation 4x + 20 = 0 is absurd.

In Europe, negative numbers appeared thanks to Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci), who also introduced it to solve financial problems with debts - in 1202 he first used negative numbers to calculate his losses.
Nevertheless, until the 17th century, negative numbers were “in the pen” and even in the 17th century, the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that 0-4 = 0 because there is no such number that can be less than nothing, and until the 19th century, mathematicians often discarded in negative numbers in his calculations, considering them meaningless ...
The first "computing devices" used by people in antiquity were fingers and pebbles. Later, tags with notches and ropes with knots appeared. IN Ancient Egypt And Ancient Greece long before our era, they used an abacus - a board with stripes along which pebbles moved. It was the first device specifically designed for computing. Over time, the abacus was improved - in the Roman abacus, pebbles or balls moved along the grooves. The abacus survived until the 18th century, when it was replaced by written calculations. Russian abacus - abacus appeared in the 16th century. They are still in use today. The great advantage of Russian abacus is that they are based on the decimal number system, and not on the five, like all other abacus.
The oldest mathematical work was found in Swaziland - a baboon bone with dashes (bone from Lembobo), which were presumably the result of some kind of calculation. The age of the bone is 37 thousand years.

In France, an even more complex mathematical work was found - an ox
whose bone, on which dashes are embossed, grouped in five pieces. The age of the bone is about 30 thousand years.
And finally, the famous bone from Ishango (Congo) on which groups of prime numbers are engraved. It is believed that the bone originated 18-20 thousand years ago.
But the Babylonian tablets with the code name Plimpton 322, created in 1800-1900 BC, can be considered the oldest mathematical text.
The ancient Egyptians did not have multiplication tables and rules. Nevertheless, they knew how to multiply and used the “computer” method for this - the decomposition of numbers into a binary series. How did they do it? That's how:
For example, you need to multiply 22 by 35.
We write down 22 35
Now we divide the left number by 2, and multiply the right one by 2. We underline the numbers on the right only when it is divisible by 2.
So,

Now add up 70+140+560=770
Correct result!
The Egyptians didn't know fractions like 2/3 or 3/4. No numerators! Egyptian priests operated only with fractions, where the numerator was always 1 and the fraction was written as follows: an integer with an oval above it. That is, 4 with an oval meant 1/4.
What about fractions like 5/6? Egyptian mathematicians decomposed them into fractions with the numerator 1. That is, 1/2 + 1/3. That is, 2 and 3 with an oval at the top.
Well, it's simple. 2/7 = 1/7 + 1/7. By no means! Another rule of the Egyptians was the absence of repeating numbers in a series of fractions. That is, 2/7 in their opinion was 1/4 + 1/28.

A person may not be a mathematician.

Moreover, he may not even know this science at the minimum level, but it is hard to deny - a person sees mathematics almost everywhere.

Numbers, figures and mathematical laws follow a person everywhere, so it would be useful to learn something about this science.

1. Abraham de Moivre (a mathematician from England) in his extreme old age suddenly realized that his sleep increased by 15 minutes every day. After that, he made a progression and determined the day when sleep would take all day. It happened on November 27, 1754, and it was the day of his death.

2. Religious and believing Jews try their best to avoid any signs that are associated with the cross or the symbolism of Christ. For example, instead of a plus, schools use an inverted “T”.

3. The authenticity of a euro banknote can always be recognized by its serial number - this is a letter and 11 digits. It is necessary to change the letter to the number that is the serial number of this letter in the alphabet. After that, you need to add all the numbers and add the results until there is one digit. And if in the end you get 8, this indicates the authenticity of the bill. Another way is to add all the numbers, without the letter. The final result, consisting of letters and numbers, must match the country in which the banknote appeared. For example, Germany is X2.

4. There is a version that Alfred Nobel refused to include mathematics in the long list of sciences for his prize for personal reasons - Alfred's wife slept with a mathematician. But in reality, Nobel was single. There is no hard evidence as to why math was not included, but there are speculations. For example, already then there was a prize, but created by the Swedish king. Another version - mathematics is purely theoretical subject, so mathematicians are not able to do anything really important for people and humanity as a whole.

5. There is such a figure as the Reuleaux triangle. It is formed through the intersection of three circles identical in radius, and the centers of these circles are located at the vertices of a triangle with equal sides. A drill based on this triangle makes it possible to drill only square holes. It is worth remembering that drilling such holes using the Reuleaux triangle can have an error of 2 percent.

6. In Russian literature and mathematics, 0 does not refer to lists of natural numbers, but in the West, 0 is one of the representatives of the set of such numbers.

7. George Danzig, a mathematician from America, being just a university graduate student, was late for class one time and, after seeing some equations, he thought that these equations are common homework tasks that need to be completed. This task seemed to him much more difficult than what was usually given, but he completed them and brought results to the teacher. And only after that he found out that he was able to solve 2 unsolvable equations of statistics. Moreover, these were the tasks that scientists could not solve for several years.

Interesting Facts about mathematics.

The first "computing devices" were fingers and pebbles. Later, tags with notches and ropes with knots appeared. In Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece long before our era. used an abacus - a board with stripes along which pebbles moved. This is the first device specifically designed for computing. Over time, the abacus was improved - in the Roman abacus, pebbles or balls moved along the grooves. The abacus survived until the 18th century, when written calculations replaced it. Russian abacus - abacus appeared in the 16th century. The great advantage of Russian accounts is that they are based on the decimal number system, and not on the five, like all other abacus.

Among all figures with the same perimeter, the circle will have the largest area. But among all figures with the same area, the circle will have the smallest perimeter.

In mathematics, there are: game theory, braid theory, and knot theory.

The cake can be divided by 3 touches of the knife into eight equal parts. Moreover, there are 2 ways.

2 and 5 are the only prime numbers that end in 2 and 5.

Zero cannot be written in Roman numerals.

The equal sign "=" was first used by Robert Record in 1557.

The sum of numbers from 1 to 100 is 5050.

Since 1995, in Taipei, Taiwan, it is allowed to delete the number 4, because in Chinese, the number sounds identical to the word "death". Many buildings do not have a fourth floor.

A moment is a unit of time that lasts about a hundredth of a second.

It is believed that 13 became an unlucky number because of the Last Supper, which was attended by 13 people, including Jesus. The thirteenth was Judas Iscariot.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is a little-known British mathematician who devoted most of his life to logic. Despite this, he is worldwide famous writer under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

The Greek Hypatia, who lived in Egyptian Alexandria in the 4th-5th centuries AD, is considered the first female mathematician.

The number 18 is the only (except zero) number, the sum of the digits of which is 2 times less than itself.

An American student, George Danzig, was late for class, which is why he mistook the equations written on the blackboard for homework. With difficulty, but he coped with them. As it turned out, these were two "unsolvable" problems in statistics, over the solution of which scientists struggled for many years.

Modern genius and professor of mathematics Stephen Hawking claims that he studied mathematics only at school. During his time teaching mathematics at Oxford, he simply read the textbook ahead of his own students by a couple of weeks.

In 1992, like-minded Australians teamed up to win the lottery. At stake was 27 million dollars. The number of combinations, 6 out of 44, amounted to a little over 7 million, at a cost lottery ticket at 1 dollar. These like-minded people created a fund in which each of the 2,500 people invested $3,000. The result is a win and a return of 9 thousand to everyone.

For the first time, Sofya Kovalevskaya learned about mathematics in childhood, when, instead of wallpaper, sheets with lectures by one mathematician on differential and integral calculus were pasted on the wall of her room. For the sake of science, she arranged a fictitious marriage. In Russia, women were forbidden to engage in science. Her father was against the departure of his daughter abroad. The only way was marriage. But later the fictitious marriage became actual and Sophia even gave birth to a daughter.

British mathematician Abraham de Moivre discovered in his old age that every day he sleeps 15 minutes more. He made an arithmetic progression, by which he determined the date when he would sleep 24 hours a day - it was November 27, 1754 - the date of his death.

There are many parables about how one person offers another to pay him for a service as follows: he will put one grain of rice on the first cell of the chessboard, two on the second, and so on: each next cell is twice as much as the previous one. As a result, he who pays in this way is bound to be ruined. This is not surprising: it is estimated that the total weight of rice will be more than 460 billion tons.

If you multiply your age by 7, then multiply by 1443, thenthe result will be your age written three times in a row.

Religious Jews try to avoid Christian symbols and generally signs that look like a cross. Therefore, students of some Israeli schools instead of the “+” sign write a sign that repeats the inverted letter “t”.

The number pi was first calculated by the Indian mathematician Budhayana in the 6th century AD.

For the first time negative numbers were legalized in China in the III century, but were used only for exceptional cases, as they were considered, in general, meaningless.

There is an opinion that Alfred Nobel did not include mathematics in the list of disciplines of his prize due to the fact that his wife cheated on him with a mathematician. In fact, Nobel never married. The real reason for ignoring mathematics by Nobel is unknown, there are only assumptions. For example, at that time there was already a prize in mathematics from the Swedish king. Another - mathematicians do not make important inventions for mankind, because. this science is purely theoretical.

In Rus', in the old days, a bucket (about 12 liters), a shtof (a tenth of a bucket) were used as units of measurement. In the USA, England and other countries, a barrel (about 159 liters), a gallon (about 4 liters), a bushel (about 36 liters), a pint (from 470 to 568 cubic centimeters) are used.

The probability of getting a solved combination of cards in the solitaire "Free cell" (or "Solitaire") is estimated at more than 99.99%

Quadratic equations were created in the 11th century in India. The largest number used in India was 10 to the 53rd power, while the Greeks and Romans only operated on numbers to the 6th power.

In a group of 23 people or more, the probability that two people have the same birthday is more than 50%, and in a group of 60 people, this probability is about 99%

Interesting facts from the history of mathematics presented below will be clear even to people far from the exact sciences. Because they are really interesting.

1. There is a story that Einstein was bad at school in all subjects. Such a legend is often told to cheer up negligent students. But it is not entirely true. Einstein s early years showed outstanding ability in mathematics. At the end of school, he tried to enter the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, and showed excellent results in physics and mathematics.

   

2. William Shanks published his manual calculations of pi in 1853.. He reached right up to 707 digits after the decimal point. In 1945, it turned out that an error crept into these calculations. William Shanks indicated the 528th digit incorrectly, and, accordingly, all the further 180 digits were also incorrect. But Shanks spent about 15 years on this work.

   

3. Sofya Kovalevskaya had to overcome a lot to get the opportunity to seriously engage in science. In Russia, women were not allowed to enter universities. There was only one way out - emigration. But the father was against his daughter devoting her life to such a "male" occupation. Therefore, Sophia went to the trick - she married a young like-minded Vladimir Kovalevsky, and left. However, this initially fictitious marriage developed into a real marital relationship, and as a result, Sophia and Vladimir had a daughter.

   

4. The Pythagorean theorem entered the Guinness Book of Records as the theorem with the maximum number of known proofs. In 1940, an edition was published containing 370 ways to prove this theorem. 5. Unfortunately, it is not known what proof Pythagoras himself used - there is no information on this subject. From another ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid, we know the proof that is today included in school curriculum. But it is very likely that Euclid invented it himself.

   

5. There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. And many are still worried about why Alfred Nobel did not include the queen of sciences in his list. The implausible version that this did not happen is quite tenacious, since Nobel's wife had an affair with a mathematician. It is implausible, if only because Nobel was never married. The true reasons for his decision are still unknown.

   

6. Knowing interesting mathematical facts and laws, you can make good money. In 1992, in the United States, in the state of Virginia, the 6 out of 44 lottery was held. The jackpot was no less than 27 million dollars. The number of possible combinations in this lottery was about 7 million. Some enterprising people created a fund and collected $3,000 from 2,500 people. After that, they bought the required number of forms and filled them in manually so that the combinations would not be repeated. The idea worked! Everyone who invested in this adventure received 3 times more.

   

7. Negative numbers were not recognized by mathematical science for a long time.. Yes, they were first legalized in China in the 3rd century AD, but they were used very rarely, since they did not see much sense in them. In the Middle Ages, the Italian mathematician Fibonacci introduced negative numbers to calculate his losses. However, all the same, until the 19th century, many bright minds did not use negative numbers in their calculations.

   

8. Lived in the III century BC. mathematician Eratosthenes of Kirensky quite accurately calculated the radius of the earth. In his calculations, he used information about the angle at which the sun is in the sky in different cities of Syene and Alexandria. He knew the distance between the cities (it was equal to 500 stadia), and this allowed him to draw conclusions about the length of the radius of the earth. The data of Eratosthenes, by the way, were not so far from the real ones, obtained using accurate modern methods research.

   

9. Until now, there are disagreements regarding zero in Russian and Western mathematical science.. It is not customary for us to consider zero as a natural number, but in the West it is referred to as such.

   

10. There are 2 official Pi birthdays. In America, it is celebrated on March 14, because such a record of this number is popular there - 3.14). In Europe, the birthday of this constant is July 22. 22/7 is another very popular approximation of pi.