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MATHS WEEK STARTED yesterday and, as is our annual tradition, we’re setting our readers some puzzles. Give them a go!
Day Two – Patterns and Relationships
We humans seem to have an innate ability to perceive quantities in small sets of objects. Numbers allow us to count and communicate precise amounts, enabling us to consider much larger quantities.
Numbers were developed sometime in prehistory, and this was surely one of the great advances of civilisation.
The Ishango Bone, which appears to have been used for counting and was found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dates back some 20,000 years. The Sumerians, around 6,000 years ago developed a numerical system in base-60. As we have 10 fingers to count with, the decimal system (base-10) seems obvious to us, but it did not appear until about 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt.
The earliest numbers were the counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.
Fractions evolved to allow quantities such as land or goods to be divided, with a half expressed as 1 divided by 2 (½) and a quarter as 1 divided by 4 (¼). Later on, these fractions were expressed as decimals (1/2 = 0.5 and 1/4 = 0.25). Throughout the years other forms of numbers were developed.
The Romans used a system of numerals that was very cumbersome for calculations. Meanwhile, in India, they had a decimal place-value system that included zero. This Indian system spread to the Islamic world and reached Europe in the Middle Ages. As number systems evolved, so too did arithmetic, geometry, and algebra.
Maths is about patterns and relationships. Can you work out the patterns in each of the number series below and find the next term for each?
1) 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ?
2) 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, ?
3) I, IV, IX, ?
4) 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, ?
5) 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, ?
6) 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, ?
7) 89, 55, 34, 21, ?
8) ¼, ½, ¾, ?
9) 1, 2, 6, 24, 120, ?
10) 3, 3, 5, 4, 4, ?
Saturday’s puzzles: The answers
Come back tomorrow at 7.30pm for the answers to today’s puzzle.
The puzzles this week have been compiled for The Journal by Eoin Gill of Maths Week Ireland and South-East Technological University (SETU).
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It’s great news at last, it’s the small businesses that suffer the most and it’s about time the small companies get the help they need, it’s they afterall that form the communities and hold together society, not some multinational that will bugger off when it suits them or when the “deal” is up.
Great news more small businesses getting loans grown their companies then taking on 2 job bridge slaves to work for them.
I’d rather sh_te in my hands and clap for eight hours than be a slave for a profitable company big or small.
So enlighten us as to what benefit you personally bring to society?
The benifits class is alive and well in Eire
My god what an irrelevant person
Ged Nash will not be elected again I believe, that is what I seem to hear from the Drogheda direction…
He won’t be
Ned Gash is junketing off to Sweden for St Patrick’s Day.
I sincerely hope that there are some good and caring Irish people in America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia etc. who are well aware of what’s going on at home and will come out and demonstrate wherever these wasters show up! Tell your family members and friends abroad, who have been forced to emigrate by the actions of this so called government, to let these miserable ministers know how they feel at the St Patrick’s Day parades around the world.
Keep Calm & Crowd Fund….
I’ve seen it all now
I wish you would shit in your hands. I’ve had two jobsbridge candidates who are still employed. Attitudes like your are the reason hard working folk resent social welfare.
Assif. Get a job.
Assif, do you need a hug?
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