I hated mathematics—at least when I was in grade school.  Nor did I do especially well in math, getting mainly Cs.  It wasn’t until years later that I appreciated its architecture of pure thought and how it is akin to poetry—the terse symbolic representation of universal and timeless truths.   After slogging through the desiccated desert of calculus, it was a joy to encounter game, group, and catastrophic theory, Fibonacci sequences, Markovian chains, fractals, and Boolean logic.  But mathematical thinking doesn’t have much to do with rational thinking, as the story of the sage Sen Chu of ancient China reminds us.  A great mathematician, he believed that numbers could explain the pattern of human life—that they could foretell the future.  Sen Chu compiled long columns of figures to prove China could never be invaded.  His figures were right, but his answer was wrong.  For Sen Chu, his brilliant calculations before him, was choked to death by the hands of an invading Tartar—who could not add.   So, says Augustine, “beware of mathematicians and all of those who make empty prophecies.  The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.”   

       Here are some math factoids.

       Did you know that:

       111 X 111 = 12321 and 1111 X 1111 = 1234321

       The even numbers are but half of all numbers and yet there are as many even numbers as all the numbers together since for every number there is its even double. 

       1729 is the smallest number that can be expressed in two different ways as a sum of two cubes (1 cubed + 12 cubed, 10 cubed + 9 cubed)

       The numeration system of the Old Testament may have been base seven.

       Here are some ways you manipulate 2 and 4 used four times to produce a result of numbers 1 to 20:

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