Practice sleight of hand with numbers Stone Ax Science

In these days of torrijas and clever equations, says the poet Diego Medrano, it is necessary to remember that there is magic in numbers that reaches the fingers and whose Latin origins come close to sleight of hand (Prestos Digitus) and sleight of hand.

Our colleague Carlo Frabetti knows a lot about these matters. Anyone who follows his articles will realize that numbers hold secrets that shape our lives. [Lea aquí los a…

En estos días de torrijas y ecuaciones inteligentes, que diría el poeta Diego Medrano, es preciso recordar que hay una magia en los números que alcanza los dedos y cuya etimología de raíz latina roza la prestidigitación (prestus digitus) y los juegos de manos.

Nuestro compañero Carlo Frabetti sabe mucho de estas cosas. Cualquiera que siga sus artículos se dará cuenta de que los números encierran secretos que dan forma a nuestra vida. [Lea aquí los artículos escritos por Carlo Frabetti]. Without going any further, following Carlo Frabetti's instructions, we can nourish our imagination and give life to our neurons by playing with the number 1089.

To do this, all you have to do is think of any three-digit number that makes you angriest; For example, I chose 579, but anything else will work too. Well, we take 579 and turn it around, that is, we turn it into 975, which is the number that we will use in turn to subtract the original number again, 579, which results in 396. We take this number and we add it to the same number, but in reverse, that is, we add 396 to 693. The result is the number 1089, which will appear whenever we follow these steps with any other three-digit number. Our numbering system known as place-decimal notation makes room for these things.

It is called “positional notation”, because the same number can represent a different value depending on its position, and it is called a decimal number, because 10 is the base of its system. But why 10 and not another number? Very easy: Because there are ten fingers on our hands and keeping accounts with them is the easiest way to list things for the first time. However, while continuing to use hands, some cultures have chosen other digital bases. For example, the Sumerians used the number 60 as a base, counting the four knuckles of the right hand, excluding the thumb, which served as the pointer. In this way we have 3 joints for four fingers, i.e. 12. After this calculation, the other hand, the entire left hand with its five fingers, adds groups of five dozen, resulting in 60.

These tricks, and their anthropological study, are things we can learn from reading mathematical biology professor Kate Yates, whose mission is to discover the mathematical truths that exist in our reality. In his book titled Life numbers Blackie begins by teaching us how to count the snails hiding in his garden and ends with a critique of an article published in The scalpel, the most prestigious medical journal. In the article mentioned above, a surprisingly small group – twelve children – was used to criminalize the MMR vaccine in 1998.

In short, it is an interesting book that teaches us how mathematics has shaped our history and that numbers and their combinations underlie everything we see, from clouds to the complex equation found in Taurija whose result will always be: ∞ (infinite).

Stone axe It is a section where Montero GlazeWith a desire for prose, he exercises his own siege on scientific reality to prove that science and art are two complementary forms of knowledge.

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