Fascinating Maths Facts 

1. If you write out pi to two decimal places, backwards it spells “pie”.

3.14 = PIE.

2. A French word for pie chart is “camembert”.

Because of course it is.

3. The spiral shapes of sunflowers follow a Fibonacci sequence.

That’s where you add the two preceding numbers in the sequence to give you the next one. So it starts 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. The Fibonacci sequence shows up in nature a fair bit.

4. The Fibonacci sequence is encoded in the number 1/89.

1/89 = 0.01 + 0.001 + 0.0002 + 0.00003 + 0.000005 + 0.0000008 + 0.00000013 + 0.000000021 + 0.0000000034 etc.

5. A pizza that has radius “z” and height “a” has volume Pi × z × z × a.

Because the area of a circle is Pi multiplied by the radius squared (which can be written out as Pi × z × z). Then you multiply by the height to get the total volume.

6. The word hundred is derived from the word “hundrath”, which actually means 120 and not 100.

Hundrath is Old Norse.

7. 111,111,111 × 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

It also works for smaller numbers: 111 × 111 = 12321.

8. In a room of just 23 people there’s a 50% chance that two people have the same birthday.

It’s called the Birthday Problem. In a room of 75 there’s a 99% chance of two people matching.

9. Zero is the only number that can’t be represented in Roman numerals.

The Latin word “nulla” would have been used instead.

10. (6 × 9) + (6 + 9) = 69.