- The word ‘mathematics’ comes from the Greek máthēma, which means learning, study, science.
- Do you know a word known as Dyscalculia? Dyscalculia means difficulty in learning arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, and learning maths facts!
- The word ‘hundrath’ in Old Norse (old language from where English language originated), from which word ‘hundred’ derives, meant not 100 but 120.
- What comes after a million, billion and trillion? A quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion and undecillion.
- The number 5 is pronounced as ‘Ha’ in Thai language.555 is also used by some as slang for ‘HaHaHa’.
- Different names for the number 0 include zero, nought, naught, nil, zilch and zip.
- Zero ( 0 ) is the only number which can not be represented by Roman numerals.
- Here is an interesting trick to check divisibility of any number by number 3.A number is divisible by three if the sum of its digits is divisible by three (3).
- Googol (meaning & origin of Google brand ) is the term used for a number 1 followed by 100 zeros and that it was used by a nine-year old, Milton Sirotta, in 1940.
- The name of the popular search engine ‘Google’ came from a misspelling of the word ‘googol’.
- Abacus is considered the origin of the calculator.
- 12,345,678,987,654,321 is the product of 111,111,111 x 111,111,111. Notice the sequence of the numbers 1 to 9 and back to 1.
- Plus (+) and Minus (-) sign symbols were used as early as 1489 A.D.
- An icosagon is a shape with 20 sides.
- From 0 to 1,000, the letter “A” only appears in 1,000 (“one thousand”).
- A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
- 40 when written “forty” is the only number with letters in alphabetical order, while “one” is the only one with letters in reverse order.
- In a group of 23 people, at least two have the same birthday with the probability greater than 1/2 .
- Among all shapes with the same perimeter a circle has the largest area.
- Among all shapes with the same area circle has the shortest perimeter .
- In working out mathematical equations, the Greek mathematician ,Pythagoreans used little rocks to represent numbers.Hence the name of Calculus was born which means pebbles in Greek..
- Have you heard about Fibonacci? It is the sequence of numbers wherein a number is the result of adding the two numbers before it! Here is an example: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on
This page is created for educational purposes, no copy right violation intended. I hope this is useful for you.
Compiled by C.Bhaskar, Professor of Mathematics,DS College,Kolkatta
Source:
C.Bhaskar, (2010), makemegenius, Funny and cool facts about math, Consultation date: February 3,2015.
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