Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Google honors Fermat

Look, Google honors Fermat and the Fermat's Last Theorem:



It is 410th birthday, I wonder if there is any significance to this number.
Read more here if you like.

Fermat's Last Theorem looks somewhat like the Pythagorean Theorem, but no triangle is involved here. No integers will make this equation work if n>2. xn+yn=zn. Of course n=2 is the Pythagorean Theorem and you know 3-4-5 is a Pythagorean Triple.

People tend not to know anything else with Fermat... he has a lot of significant contributions to Number Theory, which makes people believe he actually had a marvelous proof.

All students interested in math should take Number Theory... and you don't need to know anything about calculus to succeed... Much of Number Theory deal with integers only.

You will then able to explain: why can you determine if a number is divisible by 9 by adding up the digits to see if that is divisible by 9. Example: 6561 is divisible by 9 because 6+5+6+1 = 18 is divisible by 9.

Ok, is someone going to say, so what?

The answer is this: so you know something about the numbers and it is cool to say "congruent modulo".

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