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Painting of boys in a classroom working out a maths question on the black board.Difficulty: Taxing

Here’s a beautiful artwork from 1895, titled Mental calculation. In public school of S. A. Rachinsky, painted by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky.

Can you solve the puzzle the kids are pondering?

If you can’t quite see the equation, here it is:

(102 + 112 + 122 + 132 + 142) ÷ 365

Scroll down or click for a hint, or the answer!

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Brainteaser hint

• Although the kids in the painting are trying to do it in their heads, you can always use a pencil!
• Remember that teachers often like questions with nice round answers.
• 102 means 10 x 10. Calculate these first!

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Brainteaser answer

The answer is 2.

Here’s the working:
answer = (102 + 112 + 122 + 132 + 142) ÷ 365 = (100 + 121 + 144 + 169 + 196) ÷ 365 = 730 ÷ 365 = 2

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1 comments

  1. For doing mental arithmetic it’s handy to know a few arithmetic shortcuts.
    This problem is easier to do in your head if you know that (x + y)(x+y) = xx + 2xy + yy
    If you set x=10 and y to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
    then you can write the sum 10×10 + 11×11 + 12×12 + 13×13 + 14×14
    as
    10×10 + (10+1)x(10+1) + (10+2)x(10+2) + (10+3)x(10+3) + (10+4)x(10+4) =
    100
    + 100 + 20 + 1
    + 100 + 40 + 4
    + 100 + 60 + 9
    + 100 + 80 + 16

    = 5×100 + 20+40+60+80 + 1+4+9+16
    = 500 + 200 + 30
    =730

    I can do that in my head much more easily than I can calculate squares and add up three-digit numbers easily.

      Reply

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