ABSTRACT
There is a story from the childhood of the famous mathematical scientist Carl F. Gauss (1777-1855). His elementary school teacher, wanting to keep the class busy, assigns the problem of adding the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss’s hand goes up more or less instantly, and the correct answer
(100 × 101)/2 = 10100/2 = 5050 is produced. Actually Gauss is supposed to have solved the more general problem of finding the sum
k = 1 + 2 + 3 + · · ·+ n = n(n + 1) 2
.
