Maths with magic

On 7th February, we were lucky to have Dan Abramson deliver a talk for lower school Maths enrichment. We had nearly 30 Emanuel pupils attend, as well as ten year 7 pupils from Greycoat Hospital School. Here is a brief description of the talk by Konstantin (8HEB):

After school, on 7th February, we had a Maths with Magic show. There, pupils from year 7 and 8 tried different challenges from general maths to geometry. Mr Abramson, the Headteacher of the Kings Mathematics School, came in to present these tricks and we tried to figure out the mathematical concept behind them.

An example of one of the tricks is when Mr Abramson told us that he could predict the number which would add up in a column. He wrote down 23292 on the back of the whiteboard without us seeing and then wrote down the number 3294 on the front of the whiteboard for us to see. He then asked a pupil for another four-digit number. Any random number would work, but I’ll use the number 6482 to explain. He would then write down the number 3517. He did the same process again, using someone else’s random four-digit number. After that, he added them all up then he flipped around the board and showed us the answer of our sum which he had written beforehand! What happened? Well Mr Abramson only had to choose a four-digit number which added to the one the pupil chose and make it add up to 9999 (like 6482 + 3517 = 9999). So, 9999 plus 9999 plus his original number (in this case 3294) makes 23292, which he learnt before doing the trick.

He continued showing us lots more tricks and they got harder in difficulty along the way as we had to use calculators and whiteboards to figure out the, supposedly, “magic” tricks (but it was really just Maths!).

Konstantin (8HEB)