All thinkers

Carl Friedrich Gauss: 2 puzzles worth knowing

2 puzzles from Carl Friedrich Gauss, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• A teacher hands out busywork: add every number from 1 to 100

  As the story goes, a schoolmaster wanted to keep his class quiet, so he set them a tedious task: add up every whole number from 1 to 100, longhand. He expected it to take the rest …

  — Carl Friedrich Gauss (anecdote recorded by Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen), Gauss zum Gedaechtniss

• A 19-year-old found a shape Euclid never knew could be built

  For 2,000 years after Euclid, mathematicians assumed only a handful of regular polygons could ever be drawn using just a compass and an unmarked straightedge. In 1796, a 19-year-ol…

  — Carl Friedrich Gauss, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae

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