Skip to Content
Lateral Thinking for Every Day
book

Lateral Thinking for Every Day

by Paul Sloane
January 2023
Intermediate to advanced
248 pages
3h 45m
English
Kogan Page
Content preview from Lateral Thinking for Every Day

41

Lateral thinking in mathematics

One of the world’s greatest mathematicians, Carl Friedrich Gauss, was born in Germany in 1777. It is said that when he was a young boy at school the teacher wanted to keep the class quiet, so he set this problem: ‘Add up all the numbers from one to one hundred.’ The schoolmaster thought that this task of adding 100 numbers would secure a long silence but, in a flash, the young Gauss raised his hand with the answer. He had found a quick and elegant way to solve the problem and what he did is an example of lateral thinking in mathematics. The obvious way to tackle the problem is to add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 and so on. Gauss saw that if he added 1 + 100 he got 101, if he added 2 + 99 he got 101, if he added 3 + 98 he ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

What Successful Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Get Right

What Successful Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Get Right

Rob Angell
What Successful Project Managers Do

What Successful Project Managers Do

W. Scott Cameron, Jeffrey S. Russell, Edward J. Hoffman, Alexander Laufer
Make Yourself Clear

Make Yourself Clear

Reshan Richards, Stephen J. Valentine

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781398607958