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142857
Posted by Douglas, Sep 15, 2010. 616 views. ID = 3867
This post was written in 8 minutes.
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 | This post has been awarded 13 stars by 3 readers. |
"Mr. Twitchell, when will we use this in real life?"
"When? Probably never."
"Then why are you teaching it?"
"Because it's so cool! Look. Check this out. Take my favorite number...142,857, and multiply it by two. What do you get?"
"I don't know."
"You've got a calculator...punch it in!"
"285,714."
"Isn't that cool?"
"What?"
"It's the same sequence of digits, only it starts with the 2 instead of 1! Now multiply it by three."
"428,571. Huh."
"Wild, isn't it?"
"Does it work for four?"
"Try it."
"571,428. Does it always work?"
"You tell me."
"Hmmm...woah! If you multiply it by 7, you get 999,999."
"Yeah. Now pick a number between a hundred and a thousand."
"481."
"Multiply my number by that."
"Sixty-eight million, seven hundred fourteen thousand, two hundred seventeen. That doesn't look anything like your number."
"True. Take the first two digits off the front of that, and add them to what's left."
"Woah! You get 714,285 again!"
"Isn't that cool?"
"Yeah, but when will we use this in real life?"
"Well, I don't know...maybe you can use it to impress women?"
"Mr. Twitchell, you're such a geek!"
Copyright 2010 Douglas. All rights reserved. FifteenMinutesOfFiction.com has been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work. For permission to reprint this item, please contact the author.
| This post has been awarded 13 stars by 3 readers. |  | This post is part of a writing prompt: Numbers |
Comments
Scribbler
Sep 15, 2010 | What a great number!
It made me get my calculator out.
~Posted by Scribbler, Sep 15, 2010 |
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