Have You Ever Heard About These 23 Fun Facts In Maths?

Maths has a lot of fun facts you may ever hear about or not. However, we can't deny that these facts always bring interests to anyone in love with maths, as well as those who like to play with numbers.

Take a quick look at the 23 fun facts in maths as below:

1. Instead of saying “hahaha”, people in Thailand often say 555 because “five” (5) is pronounced “ha”.

2. Choose a number with four digits as you like, take the following steps, and the final results will be 6174.

- Select a number with four digits so that the number has two various digits or more.

- Re-arrange the digits in this number in descending order, and then in ascending order.

- Subtract the small number from the big number.

- Do the above process again.

The final result is 6174. This number is called Kaprehar’s constant, based on the Indian mathematician D. R. Kaprekar’s name.

3. 10! (or 10 factorial) means 42 days.

10! = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 x 9 x 10 = 3628800.

3628800 is the total number of seconds in 42 days (= 6 weeks).

4. Cicadas and secret prime numbers

Cicadas hide deep underground during 17 or 13 years before they are old enough to come out. Both these numbers, 17 and 13, are prime numbers. Many think that their incubation period helps the creature to avoid threats from many kinds of predators with the longer round number life-cycles.

5. .99999999... = 1

The proof is given below:

If 10N = 9.9999....

Then N = .9999

N from 10N, and then 9N = 9.

So N = 1.

But N = .9999... (as in the second equation)

So 1 = .9999...

6. In many Asian nations, the number 4 means unlucky.

In many Asian nations like Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, the number “four” is pronounced “sa, si, sei, shi” – the words imply “death.”

7. The number 7 has a lot of various meanings in human culture.

In human culture, we have witnessed the appearance of 7 in a variety of incidents such as 7 global wonders, rainbow’s 7 colors, 7 dwarfs (in the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), 7 deadly sins, and more.

In addition, there are 7 planets we can see from the Earth including Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and the Sun).

8. 7 is the most favorite number

Alex Bellos, a British writer about puzzles and maths, made an online poll with about 3000 participants. Among those, 10% liked the number 7 most and the second most liked number was 3.

9. The number 7 is a second to none

Among the numbers smaller than 10, the number 7 is the only existence that can’t be divided or multiplied to get a result within the group from 1 to 10. For example, 04 into 08 goes 02, or 05 times 02 equals 10.

10. We can’t write down a full googolplex number on paper, or even on a computer

In the Cosmos series, the American scientist Carl Edward Sagan introduced that a googolplex number is 10 to the power of a googol, or 10googol. We won’t be able to write down the full googolplex number on both paper and a computer because even a computer can’t sport enough memory.

11. Zero is also one of the even numbers

Many may wonder whether zero (0) is odd or even, but it is clearly a difficult question. In fact, the number zero is even.

12. If you know how to shuffle a deck of cards properly, it is likely that the exact order you get hasn’t ever appeared before.

13. Most of us believe that even numbers represent female and odd numbers represents the male.

James E. B. Wilkie and Galen V. Bodenhausen, Northwestern University tested and confirmed the accuracy of the ancient belief. Alex Bellos said in his newest book, "They showed respondents randomly assigned pictures of the faces of young babies, each next to a three-digit number that was either odd-odd-odd or even-even-even, and asked them to guess the baby’s sex [...] Respondents were about 10 per cent more likely to say that a baby paired with odd numbers was a boy than if the same baby was paired with even numbers."

14. (6 × 9) + (6 + 9) = 69.

15. We don’t use Roman numerals to represent the number zero. Instead of that, we use “nulla” – a Latin word.

16. Supposed there are 23 people in a room, the rate of two people having the same birthday is 50%.

In probability theory, we call it the birthday paradox or the birthday problem. If the room has 75 people, the rate will increase to 99%.

17. 111,111,111 × 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

Here is another multiplication: 111 × 111 = 12321.

18. Hundred (100) originates from “hundrath” – the word that means 120 in fact, not 100.

19. If the radius and height of a pizza are “z” and “a”, respectively, its volume equals Pi x z x z x a.

20. In maths, the Fibonacci sequence or the Fibonacci numbers is encoded in the number 1/89.

1/89 = 0.01 + 0.001 + 0.0002 + 0.00003 + 0.000005 + 0.0000008 + 0.00000013 + 0.000000021 + 0.0000000034 etc.

21. Another fun fact in maths relating to the Fibonacci sequence: sunflowers with the spiral shapes.

In the Fibonacci sequence, when we add the 02 preceding numbers, we will have the next one. Starting from 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ... That’s exactly what sunflowers’ spiral shapes show.

22. “Pie chart” in English means “Camembert” in French. It is a kind of cheese.

23. When writing down the number Pi rounded to 2 decimal places on the paper, and look it through a mirror, we have a “Pie”.