This is a little fairy tale that we all get told as mathematicians.

That's Marcus DeSotoi, who is a mathematician at Oxford University in England.

As for this fairy tale, I don't know whether it's true or not, but who cares?

The story takes us back to Germany in the late 18th century and a schoolboy named Karl Friedrich

Gauss. The young Gauss sitting eight, nine years old in his class, the teacher wants to get a little

bit of rest to set them a problem, that it'll take them ages to actually do.

Young Karl Friedrich Gauss would become one of the most remarkable mathematicians in history.

There are more than 100 theorems, formulas, models, and other math terms named after him,

but that was later. At the time of our story, he's just a very bright young student,

and the teacher gives the class this problem to solve. As DeSotoi said, it's not a particularly

interesting problem, the teacher says you've got to add up the numbers from one to a hundred,

and most of the class sets off and they go one plus two plus three plus three six.

Go ahead, try it for yourself. Add up the numbers from one to a hundred. I'll give you a minute.

Are you done? If not, then you are quite a bit slower than young Gauss.

Karl Friedrich Gauss immediately writes down a number on his chalkboard, slams it down on the desk,

and says there it is, and the teacher thinks he's being impudent, but looks down, sees,

but that's the correct answer. How did you get that so quickly?

You may be thinking, well, Gauss is plainly a math prodigy, so he just added up the numbers in his head,

really fast. That's not what he did. According to the story, here's what Gauss told his teacher.

He said, look, the rest of the class, they're all starting at the beginning and just plotting on

through this journey. I combined the beginning and the end of the journey, so one plus a hundred is

a hundred and one. Two plus ninety nine is also a hundred and one, three plus ninety eight, a hundred and one.

...