Tag Archives: beauty

Math can be freaky…

To preface, I am not a mathematician. I can hold my own in most college-level math (I’ve taken 3 years of algebra, trig, geometry, 3 years of calculus, and 1 year linear algebra: where is all that knowledge now?), but I’m still easily impressed.

I’ve been working through an algorithm textbook (more on that later), which mentions a number of very interesting mathematical equalities:

I.
13 = 1
23 = 3 + 5
33 = 7 + 9 + 11
43 = 13 +15 + 17
etc.

II.
13 + 23 + … + n3 = (1 + 2 + … + n)2

III.
12 = 1
22 = 1 + 3
32 = 1 + 3 + 5
42 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7
etc.

To be honest, when I first read these it blew my mind. There is a beautiful correspondence demonstrated in these ancient forumlas that is nearly breathtaking when you first learn of them.