The greatest mathematician of them all.......

[hamendra]

Do you know how Gauss arrived at the formula to get the sum of n numbers?
Gauss was a very great mathematician who has contributed extensively to
the field of mathematics.

One day when he was in 7th standard all his classmates were shouting
in the class...
Suddenly, the teacher came in and got so much irritated that he gave a
"very tough"
punishment for them all. The teacher wrote down a problem to find out
the sum of

"1+2+3+4+........10,0000".

When everybody started to work out this problem, Mr. Gauss thought for a while
and came up with the following invention...

Say,

1 + 2 + 3 + 4+....+N = S (where S is the sum ) ----> Eq.1



Writing Eq.1 in reverse order,

N + (N-1) + (N-2) + (N-3 ) + ..... + 1 = S ----> Eq.2



Adding the above two equations:

(N+1)+ (N+1) + (N+1) + (N+1) + ....... + (N+1) = 2S ----> Eq.3



Now taking (N+1) outside as it is common to all the n terms, we get:

(N+1)(1+ 1 + 1+ 1 + ... +1) = 2S



Then,

(N+1) * N = 2S
Sum, S = (N+1)*N/2 ----> Eq.4



Now Gauss calculated S= (10000*10001/2)= 50005000
Within 5 minutes, Gauss calculated the sum and said to his teacher,
"I have found the answer and If u want U can cross check this".
The teacher got so much offended but could not disprove Gauss's solution.

[singh1981]

Check This:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/3550/ramanuj.htm

[hamendra]

Check This:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/3550/ramanuj.htm


That is informative.

Thanks a lot.

[anujkumar]

here is nice compilation of famous mathmaticians

country wise

date of birth wise etc

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/BiogIndex.html