Life by Number

I don’t remember learning to read, and I don’t remember learning to compute,

but I have loved numbers as far back as I can remember.

My first love came in Mr. Herschberger’s third grade class.  We had daily timed multiplication tests, and I loved them! I wanted to be the first one done and answer every single one correctly. 

A few years later, In sixth grade, there was a clock on the wall in my bedroom that had glow in the dark numbers.  I figured out all kinds of multiplication short cuts staring at those numbers before falling asleep.  It was then that I figured out that five times any number was half the number multiplied by ten.  It works for all numbers big and small.  Some people act like I’m a genius for being able to compute 5x 634 in my head, but it is super simple.  Half of 634 is 317, multiply that by ten, and the answer is 3170.  Because six is one more than 5, any even number times 6 is half that number in the tens place and the number in the ones place.  This also works for odd numbers, but it is a little more complicated, and I often lose people trying to explain it. 

It was around this time (while bored in school) that I figured out how easy it is to add a series of numbers by adding the first and last numbers and multiplying the sum by half the largest number. 

I’m not sure if my fascination and love of numbers grew out of boredom or if loving numbers was the reason that I spent those bored hours ruminating on them, but numbers have been my anchor and life line for as long as I can remember.