Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I hope the readers did not find the first article difficult to digest. The readers are advised
not to hurry themselves. They are to go through these thoughts with absolute peace of
mind, for the mind shall reveal its true potential one day for a good cause. No more
lectures. Let us get back to mathematics. Have you noticed how a small seed holds the
key to a big tree? Here is a question to prove the point-
To know the answer to this question, you will have to pay homage to the simplest of all
rules- the digit-sum rule.
What is Digit Sum?
Given a number N1, all the digits of N1 are added to obtain a number N 2 . All the digits of
N2 are added to obtain a number N3, and so on, till we obtain a single digit number N.
This single digit number N is called the digit sum of the original number N1.
Example: What is the digit sum of 123456789?
Answer: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 45 --> 4 + 5 = 9. Hence, the digit sum of the
number is 9.
Note: In finding the digit-Sum of a number we can ignore the digit 9 or the digits that add
up to 9. For example, in finding the digit-sum of the number 246819, we can ignore the
digits 2, 6, 1, and 9. Hence, the digit-sum of 246819 is = 4 + 8 = 12 = 1 + 2 = 3.
Digit-Sum Rule of Multiplication: The digit-sum of the product of two numbers is equal
to the digit sum of the product of the digit sums of the two numbers!
Example: The product of 129 and 35 is 4515.
Example: Find the sum of the sum of the sum of the digits of 25!
25! = 1 2 3 ... 24 25. As one of the multiplicands is 9, the digit sum will be 9.
3. Determining if a number is a perfect square or not
It can be seen from the table that the digit-sum of the numbers which are perfect
squares will always be 1, 4, 9, or 7.
Note: A number will NOT be a perfect square if its digit-sum is NOT 1, 4, 7, or 9, but it
may or may not be a perfect square if its digit-sum is 1, 4, 7, or 9.
Example: Is the number 323321 a perfect square?
Answer: the digit-sum of the number 323321 is 5. Hence, the number cannot be a perfect
square.
Example: A 10-digit number N has among its digits one 1, two 2s, three 3s, and four 4s.
Is N be a perfect square?
Answer: We can see that the digit sum of a perfect square is always 1, 4, 7, or 9. As the
digit sum of the number is 3, it cannot be a perfect square.
Now can you answer the question that I posed? I bet that you can.