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Carl Friedrich Gauss was recognized as a mathematical genius when he was ten.
One day a professor gave him an arithmetic problem. Carl was asked to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100 (1+2+3+4+5, etc.). And it took him only 8 seconds to solve the problem.
How could he do it so quickly?
Carl could do it quickly because he knew that each pair of numbers: 1 plus 100, 2 plus 99, 3 plus 98, and so on to 50 plus 51 - equaled 101. So he multiplied 50 times 101 and came up with the answer: 5 050.
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