Math Trivia
A number whose divisors (other than itself) sum to itself
What is a perfect number
Solve for x: 3(2x-5)+2=11
x=4
An ancient Greek mathematician from around 570 BC who founded a religious cult based around numbers and geometry
Who is Pythagorus
How many wives did King Henry the 8th have?
6
This number is called the ‘number of the beast’ and is considered demonic by some Christians
What is 666
This theorem states that the means of many large samples taken from a population will form a normal distribution
What is the central limit theorem
A polynomial whose interior angles always add to 900 degrees
What is a septagon
This number was first used as a placeholder in a place-value number system by the Babylonians in 400 BC, and appeared as an independent number in India in 650 AD
What is zero
For how many years did the USSR exist?
69
After writing this many symphonies, Beethoven died, leading to some composers believing this was a curse and limiting themselves to writing less than this many
What is 9 symphonies
A mathematical structure where addition, subtraction, and multiplication are all well defined, but division might not be
What is a ring
What could x equal to make this sample’s mean and median be equal? 11,12,8,5,x
x=4 or x=19
This theorem was proved in the 1990s, but was first claimed to have been proven in the 1660s with the mathematician writing ‘I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.’
What is Fermat’s last theorem
What year did the ‘Sepoy Mutiny' or the ‘Great Rebellion’ occur in India?
1857
In world war 2, there was a superstition that if this many soldiers lit a cigarette with the same match, the last to light would die
What is 3
(Challenge!) Euler’s number is approximately (most digits gets the points)
2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757…
How many primes p are there such that p squared plus 2 is also prime
1 (3 is the only such prime)
One of the inventors of calculus, who was also a legal academic, studied Chinese civilization, and is credited with inventing the binary number system
Who is Leibniz
How many days did William Henry Harrison hold office as president of the United States?
32
In some east Asian cultures, this number is considered unlucky due to it sounding similar to their word for death
What is 4
The ratio of the distance between opposite vertices and the side length of a regular pentagon. It is also the ratio approached by sequential terms of the Fibonacci sequence
What is the Golden Ratio
If a and b are integers whose product is 5, what is the least possible value of a to the power of b
-1 (It is -1 to the power of -5)
Resolved by Euler in 1736, this problem is regarded as one of the founding problems in both topology and graph theory
What is the Seven Bridges of Königsberg
How many times is it believed that Caesar was stabbed by the senators when he died?
23
In Italy, this number is considered unlucky, especially when this day lands on a Friday. This stems from the fact that in roman numerals this number is an anagram for ‘I have lived’, and the biblical flood is said to have started on this number day of the second month
What is 17