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God’s Perfection in Mathematics

June 3, 2016 // Esther Filbrun 3 Comments

One evening about a month ago, my six-year-old brother asked a question that was designed to stump the oldest of us. “What’s fifty times fifty?” He loves starting with the hardest number to multiply that he can fathom, and then multiply that by itself, the new number by itself again, and keep going—until even the calculator groans and returns an E+, ‘Overflow’, or simply starts showing uninterpretable decimals.

Squares 01

But since fifty times fifty isn’t too big, I set it up on the whiteboard for him and gave him the answer. “Two thousand five hundred.”

“So…what’s forty times forty?”

I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went from there, but we ended up calculating several squares in the 47-52 range. After looking at the ones on the board, I suddenly wondered if there was a pattern. If we could possibly predict the next one.

472 = 2,209
482 = 2,304 (difference from 472: 95)
492 = 2,401 (difference from 482: 97)
502 = 2,500 (difference from 492: 99)
512 = 2,601 (difference from 502: 101)
522 = 2,704 (difference from 512: 103)

If there is a pattern, 532 should be 522 plus 105. It is—2,809.

After this, Mom went back to 1 and wrote down the squares of the first 12 numbers, to see if they followed the same pattern.

Squares 02
Should give you an idea of what she did. The differences are the bottom row of numbers.

They do. Each difference is precisely two numbers greater than the last one. Incredible, isn’t it? And while it’s amazing, we also realize that God has known all along and He made it that way for a reason.

So there’s your math lesson for the day. A terribly impractical, but undeniably fascinating pattern.

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Filed Under: Thinking Tagged With: Homeschooling, Thoughts

About Esther Filbrun

I am a young woman in New Zealand. I enjoy writing, cooking, sewing, reading, editing, and, most of all, praising my heavenly Father.

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Comments

  1. Ross Taylor says

    June 4, 2016 at 8:48 am

    Esther, I really like your brain :-). You see patterns where many see confusion. It is the ability to see order in creation that has led to many of the major discoveries in science. That you temper your appreciation of design with an understanding of the Creator is wonderful.

    I wonder what you would make of this video clip? Professor John Lennox is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford. Professor Richard Dawkins is the most militant atheist out there. What is interesting, apart from the ‘facts’ discussed, is the spirit of the two men in the debate. Its remarkable. Anyway, I’ll put the link in here – I rather suspect that you’ll enjoy it. 🙂

    God bless,
    Ross

    Reply
  2. Elaine says

    June 14, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    There is also a very obvious repeating pattern in the one’s place! Fascinating!

    Reply
    • Esther Filbrun says

      June 17, 2016 at 10:13 pm

      There is, too! That’s neat. Thanks for sharing, Elaine!

      Reply

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Hi! I’m Esther, lover of the Lord Jesus Christ and brainstormer behind helping families find good books (read more about that here). My goal is to live a purposeful, fulfilling life—whether that is in what I read, write, cook, design, or do with my wonderful siblings. My life is full and often messy. But God is good. Welcome to the adventure!

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