Jonathans integer story

Friday, October 24, 2008

My integer story


Once upon a time there was a man who loved to sleep. He would sleep all day and and all night for days and days. As you can imagine he had lots of dreams. In one of his dreams he had a dream that had to do with math. In his dream he had to solve the problem (-7)+(+7).


He thinks that it should be 14. Suddenly the magic math wizard appeared and told him to look carefully at the first number. After the man looked at the first number he saw the negative sign. The man soon changed his answer to 0 because he new that 7+7 was 14 but -7+7 was zero.

The man did sleep a lot but when he was awake he would spend most of his time at the beach. One day he was just about to jump into the lake when he saw a math question in the sand. The question was, what is (+7482)+(3628).

he was puzzled by the Question because it was so big. He was going to give up but suddenly out of the water came the math wizard. The wizard looked at the question and started to laugh. When the man asked why he laughed he told him that he laughed because the answer was so simple. He told the man that all you have to do is add up the numbers that make a ten and then figure it out from there. The man still didn't understand so he showed him. 7000+3000=10000. 400+600=1000. 80+20=100. 2+8=10. 10000+1000+100+10=11110.

After he went to the beach he decided to buy an ice cream cone. After doing math questions with the math wizard he thought that he deserved an ice cream cone but to his surprised the ice cream man was the math wizard. The math wizard told the man that if he wanted an ice cream cone that he would have to solve one more problem. The man was frustrated at the wizard but he really wanted some ice cream so he asked him what the question was. The math wizard asked him if he could give the answer to (-5)-(+5)

The man thought and thought but he was really stuck. Finally, he came up with an answer. "To find the answer you must change the question. -5 stays the same but the negative sign in the middle changes to a positive sign. Also the +5 at the end has to change to a -5. The question now is (-5)+(-5). The answer is -10." The wizard was proud of him and the man got his ice cream.

After eating his ice cream cone he decided that he would go back to sleep. As the man was heading home he saw another math question spray painted on a brick wall. The question was (+200)-(-100)+(+50).

The man stopped and looked at the problem, he also noticed that there was a hooded man with a spray paint can a few meters away from him. The man was just about to ask him if he made the question when suddenly the stranger turned around. The stranger turned out to be the math wizard. The man was surprised but he was puzzled at the question. The wizard wouldn't tell him the answer and the wizard said that he should find this one out to. The man thought hard and then the light bulb turned on.” I got it. All you have to do is change the negative sign into a positive sign and the -100 into +100”. He then took the spray paint can away from the wizard and spray painted (+200)+(+100)+(50)= 350. The wizard was very impressed and on that note the man decided to go home and sleep after a day full of math.




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