Doing Math = Getting Prizes

One of the greatest mathematicians of all time is Carl Friedrich Gauss. Here is a link to his Wikipedia page:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss 

I first heard of Carl Gauss when I was taking College Algebra. We were learning about Sequences and Series. My professor told our class about when Carl Gauss was in early grade school. Gauss’ class was being disruptive and the teacher decided to punish them with a math problem… go figure, lol.  The students were required to stay in from recess and add all the numbers starting with 1 to 100. About 5 minutes after the math problem was given, the instructor was approached by Carl Gauss who provided the correct answer. This enraged the teacher because this task should of taken a lot longer to solve and was intended as a punishment.

Do you think you can add up all the numbers 1 to 100 in under 10 minutes? 

Here is a hint to how this was done:

Write every number 1 to 100 in a single line 1, 2, 3, … , 98, 99, 100. Then directly below the number 1 write 100, below 2 write 99, below 3 write 98, … , below 98 write 3, below 99 write 2, and below 100 write 1. Then add up each group of stacked number, like (1 + 100 = 101 | 2 + 99 = 101 | … | 99 + 2 = 101 | 100 + 1 = 101). This will produce 100 of 101’s below each stacked numbers. I will leave the rest for you to figure out.

If you can get the sum of the numbers between 1 to 100 and come to my office LC 402f to show me your results then I will give you a prize. Best of luck

Thanks,

Brad