A Sum of Products Trick

Item

Title

A Sum of Products Trick

Description

Begin with any positive integer n. Write it as the sum of two smaller positive integers, say a and b. Compute the product ab. Repeat the same step in any order for each of the smaller numbers a and b. Continue this process until the only numbers left are 1s. Add up all the products. Regardless of the order in which the final 1s are obtained, the sum of the products will be the same. This talk will present the mathematics needed to explain why the products are the same and show how the ideas may be extended to other types of products whose sums will again be identical.

Vincent Ferlini

Contributor

Keene State College

Creator

Shannon Daley

Date

2015-04-11

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12088/7581

Language

en_US

Subject

Mathematics

Type

Presentation

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Item sets

AEC 2015 Sciences

Site pages

Sciences