Sum odd facts
MATHS IS SCARY BUT IF YOU HAVE A JIFFY..
1 Markings on a bone from 20,000 years ago suggest prehistoric humans were doing maths. The Ishango tool found in Congo has a series of marks carved in three columns running its length – a bit like a tally chart.
2 The word “hundred” comes from the old Norse term, “hundrath”, which actually means 120 and not 100.
3 In a room of 23 people there’s a 50% chance two people have the same birthday. With 75 people the chances rise to 99%.
4 Most mathematical symbols weren’t invented until the 16th century. Before that, equations were written in words. A division sign is called an obelus.
5 The number 40 is the only number spelled with its letters in alphabetical order, while four is the only number spelled with the same amount of letters as the number itself.
6 Eleven plus two is an anagram of twelve plus one – and they both add up to 13. There are also 13 letters in each.
7 Every odd number has an “e” in it, while two and five are the only prime numbers that end in two or five.
8 Back in a jiffy? You had best get a move on as a jiffy is an actual unit of time. Physicist Gilbert Newton Lewis defined it as the time it takes light to travel 1cm – equal to about 33 picoseconds.
9 The word “mathematics” only appears in one Shakespeare play, The Taming Of The Shrew, where a character is introduced as “cunning in music and the mathematics”.
10 You do the math... Americans leave off the “s” at the end of the word because they reckon mathematics is a singular noun rather than plural, so there’s just one “math”.
11 In France, a pie chart is called a camembert, like the round cheese, while in Greece they are known as pitta charts. It’s pizza in Portugal and cake in China and Sweden.
12 If you shuffle a deck of cards, it’s more than likely that the exact order you get has never been seen before in the history of the universe, as there are so many different ways the cards can fall.
13 In Japan and China, the number four is associated with death, and many Chinese hospitals do not have a fourth floor.
14 Multiplying ones always gives palindromic numbers – they read the same forwards and backwards. If you multiply 11x11 you get 121, 111x111 equals 12321, 1111x1111 is 1234321.
15 The numbers on the opposite sides of dice always add up to seven. Research has also found seven is most people’s favourite number, which may be why so many things have it – such as The Magnificent Seven, Seven Wonders of the World and Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.