1. Carl Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians, was born in 1777 in Brunswick, Germany. He was gifted mathematics and showed a talent in that field at an early age.

A popular story about this mathematical genius goes like this....

One day, his primary school teacher asked all the pupils to find the value of:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . . . + 98 + 99 + 100

It was his teacher;s hope to use this lengthy addition of integers to quieten down the class.

Surprisingly, the mathematical prodigy worked out the correct answer almost instantaneously!

Well? Don’t you want to know how he did it?

Gauss added 1 to 100, 2 to 99, ... each pair added to 101. There were such 50 pair from integers 1 to 100, he multiplied 50 by 101 to get the final answer, 5050.