Lesson 3

Explore

 

Germany’s Carl Friedrich Gauss was known as the prince of mathematicians. Gauss contributed much to the development of mathematics. Gauss was a child prodigy who had a gift for rapidly calculating complex sums in his head.

 

Gauss’ mathematical genius did not keep him from misbehaving at school. It is said that one of his teachers disciplined Gauss by assigning him what was thought to be a difficult task—calculating the sum of the first 100 natural numbers; in other words 1 + 2 + 3 + … + 100. Much to the surprise of his teachers and his classmates, Gauss calculated the sum in a matter of seconds! How did he do it?

 

As impressive as Gauss’ feat was, you don’t have to be a child prodigy to find the answer. In fact, Gauss’ problem-solving approach is simple to understand. Gauss looked at the problem from a different perspective.

 

In this lesson you will learn how Gauss saw the problem his teacher had given him. You will also learn to solve other problems involving the sum of the terms of arithmetic sequences.

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