Yes. I am a math nerd.

The passage below is from the book called Fermat's last theorem by Amir Aczel. The book tells the story about how mathematicians finally proved a mathematical statement from Fermat. This book gives a brief history of mathematics and introduced famous mathematicians who created algebra, geometry, and calculus. I admire how Aczel make sure to break down sophisticated topic to the reader so that non mathematician can understand and enjoy reading this book. In this book, Aczel uses an interesting tactic to keep the reader interested. He starts the book by giving us the trailer for this book and he explain the conclusion. He dedicates rest of his book to show us the process of getting to the right answer. The main purpose of this book is to show how many branches of mathematics can work together to prove a theorem. I love the passage below because I could easily understand the author and I could see inside the gifted mathematician's to approach a problem. After reading this passage, I was encourage to solve mathematical question with more efficient method. This served as a excellent anecdote for me to remember the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.


Here is the passage:
One day, the teacher punished young Gauss by telling him to stay in the class room until he add up all the number from 1 to 100 while every went to play outside. Two minutes later, 10 years old Gauss was outside playing with the rest of the class. The teacher came out furious. "Carl Friedrich!" the teacher called, "do you want more severe punishment? I told you to stay inside until you finish adding up all the numbers!" "But I have," he said, "here is the answer." Gauss handed the teacher a piece of paper with the right answer, 5,050, written on it. Apparently, Gauss figured out that he could write two rows of 101 numbers:
0 1 2 3 ..... 97 98 99 100
100 99 98 97..... 3 2 1 0
He noted that sum of each column was 100, so there was nothing long to add up. since there was 101 columns, the sum of all numbers was 101 x 100 = 10,100. Now, either of the two rows had the sum he needed only one of the two rows the answer was half of 10,000, or 5,050. Very simple, he thought. The teacher, however, learn a lesson and never again assigned the young Gauss a math problem for punishmen.

Aczel, Amir D. "Gauss." Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem. New York, NY: Dell Pub., 1997. 51-52. Print.