Hello world!

Thanks for visiting my blog. I think you’ll find lots of new exciting things in the world of math on my site. Years ago while I was teaching math in a drop out prevention program I found a lot of hidden patterns in the multiples of numbers, which I had never seen before. I was basically taking the multiples of a number and then reducing all the numbers down to single digits. Reducing a number simply means that you add the digits of a number together until you have a single digit. For example, if you reduced the number 54, you would add five plus four and the result would be nine (5 + 4 = 9). Usually you only have to reduce a number once, but occasionally you will have to reduce two times, as in 39, where (3 + 9 = 12). Then 1 + 2 = 3.   So 39 reduces down to the number 3.

Reducing numbers is done commonly in numerology.   Although you may think of numerology as some crazy woo woo science, you may reconsider when you realize that Pythagoras was heavily involved in numerology.

So what I realized during my teaching years was that all the multiples of all the numbers once reduced reveal a pattern. Let’s start with a small number, like the lowly number three. In the following table, I listed the multiples for the number 3, then I showed the math involved to reduce the number and then finally, I show all the numbers reduced.

So you can see that a simple pattern emerges of a repeating 3, 6, 9 pattern.   So basically all the numbers have multiples that reduce to simple patterns, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of other crazy things happening with numbers. Using this information to teach your kids and/or students will add more fun and mystery to the process. Give it a try; I think you and your kids will love it.