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Computing Science
Gauss’s Day of Reckoning

Brian Hayes
L et me tell you a story, although

it’s such a well-worn nugget of
mathematical lore that you’ve prob-
A famous story
and yet they also exhibit marvelous di-
versity and creativity, as authors have
struggled to fill in gaps, explain moti-
ably heard it already:
about the boy wonder vations and construct a coherent narra-
tive. (I soon realized that I had done a
In the 1780s a provincial German
schoolmaster gave his class the te- of mathematics bit of ad lib embroidery myself.)
After reading all those variations on
dious assignment of summing the
the story, I still can’t answer the funda-
first 100 integers. The teacher’s has taken on mental factual question, “Did it really
aim was to keep the kids quiet for
happen that way?” I have nothing new
half an hour, but one young pupil
almost immediately produced an
a life of its own to add to our knowledge of Gauss. But
I think I have learned something about
answer: 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 98 + 99 + 100
example: How did the teacher verify the evolution and transmission of such
= 5,050. The smart aleck was Carl
that Gauss’s answer was correct? If the stories, and about their place in the
Friedrich Gauss, who would go
schoolmaster already knew the formula culture of science and mathematics. Fi-
on to join the short list of candi-
for summing an arithmetic series, that nally, I also have some thoughts about
dates for greatest mathematician
would somewhat diminish the drama how the rest of the kids in the class
ever. Gauss was not a calculating
of the moment. If the teacher didn’t might have approached their task. This
prodigy who added up all those
know, wouldn’t he be spending his in- is a subject that’s not much discussed in
numbers in his head. He had a
terlude of peace and quiet doing the the literature, but for those of us whose
deeper insight: If you “fold” the
same mindless exercise as his pupils? talents fall short of Gaussian genius, it
series of numbers in the middle
There are other ways to answer this may be the most pertinent issue.
and add them in pairs—1 + 100,
question, but there are other questions
2 + 99, 3 + 98, and so on—all the
too, and soon I was wondering about Wunderkind
pairs sum to 101. There are 50
the provenance and authenticity of I started my survey with five modern
such pairs, and so the grand total
the whole story. Where did it come biographies of Gauss: books by G.
is simply 50×101. The more gen-
from, and how was it handed down Waldo Dunnington (1955), Tord Hall
eral formula, for a list of consecu-
to us? Do scholars take this anecdote (1970), Karin Reich (1977), W. K. Bühler
tive numbers from 1 through n, is
seriously as an event in the life of the (1981) and a just-issued biography by
n(n+1)/2.
mathematician? Or does it belong to M. B. W. Tent (2006). The schoolroom
The paragraph above is my own ren- the same genre as those stories about incident is related by all of these au-
dition of this anecdote, written a few Newton and the apple or Archimedes thors except Bühler. The versions differ
months ago for another project. I say in the bathtub, where literal truth is in a few details, such as Gauss’s age, but
it’s my own, and yet I make no claim of not the main issue? If we treat the epi- they agree on the major points. They all
originality. The same tale has been told sode as a myth or fable, then what is mention the summation of the same se-
in much the same way by hundreds the moral of the story? ries, namely the integers from 1 to 100,
of others before me. I’ve been hearing To satisfy my curiosity I began and they all describe Gauss’s method in
about Gauss’s schoolboy triumph since searching libraries and online resourc- terms of forming pairs that sum to 101.
I was a schoolboy myself. es for versions of the Gauss anecdote. None of these writers express much
The story was familiar, but until I By now I have over a hundred exem- skepticism about the anecdote (unless
wrote it out in my own words, I had plars, in eight languages. The sources Bühler’s silence can be interpreted as
never thought carefully about the events range from scholarly histories and bi- doubt). There is no extended discussion
in that long-ago classroom. Now doubts ographies to textbooks and encyclope- of the story’s origin or the evidence sup-
and questions began to nag at me. For dias, and on through children’s litera- porting it. On the other hand, references
ture, Web sites, lesson plans, student in some of the biographies did lead me
Brian Hayes is Senior Writer for American Sci- papers, Usenet newsgroup postings to the key document on which all sub-
entist. Additional material related to the “Comput- and even a novel. All of the retellings sequent accounts seem to depend.
ing Science” column appears in Hayes’s Weblog at describe what is recognizably the same This locus classicus of the Gauss
http://bit-player.org. Address: 211 Dacian Avenue, incident—indeed, I believe they all de- schoolroom story is a memorial vol-
Durham, NC 27701. Internet: bhayes@amsci.org rive ultimately from a single source— ume published in 1856, just a year after
© 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction

200 American Scientist, Volume 94
with permission only. Contact perms@amsci.org.
Gauss’s death. The author was Wolf-
gang Sartorius, Baron von Waltershau-
sen, professor of mineralogy and ge-
ology at the University of Göttingen,
where Gauss spent his entire academic
career. As befits a funerary tribute, it is
affectionate and laudatory throughout.
In the portrait Sartorius gives us,
Gauss was a wunderkind. He taught
himself to read, and by age three he
was correcting an error in his father’s
arithmetic. Here is the passage where
Sartorius describes Gauss’s early
schooling in the town of Braunschweig,
near Hanover. The translation, except
for two phrases in brackets, is by Hel-
en Worthington Gauss, a great-grand-
In a fanciful drawing done in the manner of a woodcut, the young Carl Friedrich Gauss re-
daughter of the mathematician.
ceives instruction in arithmetic from the schoolmaster J. G. Büttner. As the story goes, Gauss
was about to give Büttner a lesson in mathematical creativity. (Illustration by Theoni Pappas,
In 1784 after his seventh birth- reprinted from Pappas 1993 by permission.)
day the little fellow entered the
public school where elementary sat quietly with his task ended, as simply “eine arithmetischen Reihe,”
subjects were taught and which fully aware as he always was on Worthington Gauss inserts “a series of
was then under a man named finishing a task that the problem numbers from 1 to 100.” I cannot ac-
Büttner. It was a drab, low school- had been correctly solved and that count for this interpolation. I can only
room with a worn, uneven floor.... there could be no other result. guess that Worthington Gauss, under
Here among some hundred pu- At the end of the hour the slates the influence of later works that discuss
pils Büttner went back and forth, were turned bottom up. That of the 1-to-100 example, was trying to help
in his hand the switch which was the young Gauss with one solitary out Sartorius by filling in an omission.
then accepted by everyone as the figure lay on top. When Büttner The second bracketed passage marks
final argument of the teacher. read out the answer, to the surprise an elision in the translation: Where Sar-
As occasion warranted he used of all present that of young Gauss torius has the pupils “rechnen, multi-
it. In this school—which seems was found to be correct, whereas plizieren und addieren,” Worthington
to have followed very much the many of the others were wrong. Gauss writes just “adding.” I’ll have
pattern of the Middle Ages—the more to say on this point below.
young Gauss remained two years Incidental details from this account
without special incident. By that reappear over and over in later tell- Making History
time he had reached the arith- ings of the story. The ritual of piling up If Sartorius did not specify a series run-
metic class in which most boys re- the slates is one such feature. (It must ning from 1 to 100, where did those
mained up to their fifteenth year. have been quite a teetering heap by the numbers come from? Could there be
Here occurred an incident time the hundredth slate was added!) some other document from Gauss’s era
which he often related in old age Büttner’s switch (or cane, or whip) also that supplies the missing details? Per-
with amusement and relish. In made frequent appearances until the haps someone to whom Gauss told the
this class the pupil who first fin- 1970s but is less common now; we have story “with amusement and relish” left
ished his example in arithmetic grown squeamish about mentioning a record of the occasion. The existence
was to place his slate in the mid- such barbarities. of such a corroborating document can-
dle of a large table. On top of this What’s most remarkable about the not be ruled out, but at present there is
the second placed his slate and Sartorius telling of the story is not no evidence for it. None of the works
so on. The young Gauss had just what’s there but what’s absent. There I have seen makes any allusion to an-
entered the class when Büttner is no mention of the numbers from 1 other early source. If an account from
gave out for a problem [the sum- to 100, or any other specific arithmetic Gauss’s lifetime exists, it remains so ob-
ming of an arithmetic series]. The progression. And there is no hint of scure that it can’t have had much influ-
problem was barely stated before the trick or technique that Gauss in- ence on other tellers of the tale.
Gauss threw his slate on the table vented to solve the problem; the idea In the literature I have surveyed, the
with the words (in the low Braun- of combining the numbers in pairs is 1–100 series makes its first appearance
schweig dialect): “There it lies.” not discussed, nor is the formula for in 1938, some 80 years after Sartorius
While the other pupils contin- summing a series. Perhaps Sartorius wrote his memoir. The 1–100 example
ued [counting, multiplying and thought the procedure was so obvious is introduced in a biography of Gauss
adding], Büttner, with conscious it needed no explanation. by Ludwig Bieberbach (a mathemati-
dignity, walked back and forth, A word about the bracketed phras- cian notorious as the principal instru-
occasionally throwing an ironi- es: Strange to report, the Worthington ment of Nazi anti-Semitism in the
cal, pitying glance toward this the Gauss translation does mention the first German mathematical community).
youngest of the pupils. The boy 100 integers. Where Sartorius writes Bieberbach’s telling of the story is

www.americanscientist.org 2006 May–June 201
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202 American Scientist, Volume 94 © 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
also the earliest I have seen to specify state of terrified stupidity that they for- not just the accumulation of errors of
Gauss’s strategy for calculating the got their own names.” Very cinematic! transmission, as in the children’s game
sum—the method of forming pairs that When it comes to the arithmetic, how- “whisper down the lane”; authors are
add to 101. Should Bieberbach there- ever, Bell is one of the few writers who deliberately choosing to “improve” the
fore be regarded as the source from scruple to distinguish between fact and story, to make it a better narrative.
whom scores of later authors have bor- conjecture. He doesn’t claim to know For the most part, I would not criti-
rowed these “facts”? Or is this a case of the actual numerical series, but writes: cize this practice. Effective storytelling
multiple independent invention? “The problem was of the following sort, is surely a legitimate goal, and outside
If you think it utterly implausible 81297 + 81495 + 81693 + ... + 100899, of formal scholarly works, a bit of em-
that two or more authors would come where the step from one number to the broidery on the bare fabric of the plot
up with the same example and the next is the same all along (here 198), does no harm. A case in point is the
same method, then Bieberbach himself and a given number of terms (here 100) theme of “busywork” found in most
is disqualified as the source. A full mil- are to be added.” (Personally, I’d have a recent tellings of the story (including
lennium before Gauss and Büttner had hard time even writing that problem on mine). It seems we feel a need to ex-
their classroom confrontation, essen- a small slate, much less solving it.) plain why Büttner would give his pu-
tially the same problem and solution pils such a long and dreary exercise.
appeared in an eighth-century manu- The Narrative Urge But Sartorius says nothing at all about
script attributed to Alcuin of York. It’s a challenge to sort out patterns of in- Büttner’s motivation, nor do any of the
Furthermore, in the years since fluence and transmission in such a col- other 19th-century works I’ve consult-
Bieberbach wrote, there is unmistak- lection of stories. When a later author ed. The idea that he wanted to keep the
able evidence of independent inven- mentions the series 81297 + 81495 + ..., kids quiet while he took a break is en-
tion. Not all versions agree that the we can be pretty sure those numbers tirely a modern inference. It’s probably
sequence of numbers was the set of came from Bell. When the example giv- wrong—at best it’s unattested—and
consecutive integers from 1 through en is 1–100, however, it’s not so easy to yet it answers a need of readers today.
100. Although that series is the over- trace the line of inheritance—if there In the same spirit, many authors con-
whelming favorite, many others have is one. And the dozen or so other se- front the question that got me started
been proposed. Some are slight varia- quences that appear in the literature on this quest: How did Büttner do the
tions: 0–100 or 1–99. Several authors argue for a high rate of mutation; every math? Bell is adamant that Büttner knew
seem to feel that adding up 100 num- one of those examples had to be invent- the formula beforehand; others say he
bers is too big a job for primary-school ed at least once. learned the trick only when Gauss ex-
students, and so they trim the scope Tellers of a tale like this one seem plained it to him. An example of the
of the assignment, suggesting 1–80, or to work under a special dispensation latter position is the following account
1–50, or 1–40, or 1–20, or 1–10. A few from the usual rules of history-writ- written in 2001 by three fifth-grade stu-
others apparently think that 1–100 is ing. Authors who would not dare to dents, Ryan, Jordan and Matthew:
too easy, and so they give 1–1,000 or alter a fact such as Gauss’s place of
When Gauss was in elementary
else a series in which the difference birth or details of his mathematical
school his teacher Master Bütt-
between successive terms is a constant proofs don’t hesitate to embellish this
ner did not really like math so he
other than 1, such as the sequence 3, 7, anecdote, just to make it a better story.
did not spend a lot of time on the
11, 15, 19, 23, 27. They pick and choose from the ma-
subject. One of the problems his
Perhaps the most influential version terials available to them, taking what
teacher gave the class was “add all
of the story after that of Sartorius is the they need and leaving the rest—and
the whole numbers from 1 to 100”.
one told by Eric Temple Bell in Men of if nothing at hand suits the purpose,
His teacher Master Büttner was
Mathematics, first published in 1937. Bell then they invent! For example, several
amazed that Gauss could add all
has a reputation as a highly inventive authors show a familiarity with Bell’s
the whole numbers 1 to 100 in his
writer (a trait not always considered a version of the story, quoting or bor-
head. Master Büttner didn’t believe
virtue in a biographer or historian). He rowing distinctive phrases from it, but
Gauss could do it, so he made him
turns the Braunschweig schoolhouse they decline to go along with Bell’s
show the class how he did it. Gauss
into a scene of gothic horror: “a squalid choice of a series beginning 81297,
showed Master Büttner how to do
relic of the Middle Ages run by a vir- falling back instead on the old reli-
it and Master Büttner was amazed
ile brute, one Büttner, whose idea of able 1–100 or inserting something else
at what Gauss just did.
teaching the hundred or so boys in his entirely. Thus it appears that what is
charge was to thrash them into such a driving the evolution of this story is Am I being unfair in matching up Eric
Temple Bell against three fifth-grad-
A catalog of stories (opposite page) records features of some 70 tellings of the Gauss anecdote. ers? Unfair to which party? Both offer
(Additional versions and bibliographic details are available on the American Scientist Web site.) interpretations that can’t be supported
The rightmost columns of the table indicate the following features that may or may not be pres- by historical evidence, but Ryan, Jor-
ent in a given version: whether Gauss is identified as the youngest member of his class, whether
dan and Matthew are closer to the ex-
the assignment is explained as busywork, whether Büttner’s whip is mentioned, whether Gauss
declares “Ligget se!” (“There it lies!”), whether the classroom procedure of piling up slates is
perience of classroom life.
described, whether Gauss is said to be the only student who got the right answer, whether Bütt-
ner is assumed to know a method for summing the series, and finally whether two other items Summing Up
of Gauss lore are mentioned—that he learned to count before he learned to talk, and that at age As with the identity of the series, the
three he corrected his father’s arithmetic. Some of these features, such as the busy-work theme, details of how Gauss solved the prob-
were not present in the original versions but are now commonplace. lem remain a matter of conjecture. The

�� computational details are different and,
� �� more important, so are the reasoning
�� processes that lead to these formulas.
��
� �� There is yet another way of think-
ing about the summation process:
��
n(n+1)/2 has been known since an-
� �� tiquity as the formula for the triangular
�� numbers, those in the sequence 1, 3, 6,
��
� �� 10, 15, 21.... Thus some authors suggest
that Gauss was thinking geometrically,
��
forming an n-by-n+1 rectangle and cut-
ting it along the diagonal.
��
� �� Doing It the Hard Way
��
�� So much for how the prodigious Carl
�� Friedrich Gauss solved the problem.
��
�
What about the rest of the students in
the class? Let me invite you to take a
��
sheet of paper and actually try adding
the numbers from 1 to 100.
Finished? Already?
What I discovered when I tried this
�
�� experiment is that it’s really hard to
�
do it the hard way. You may set out
to plod dutifully through all the ad-
dition operations, but shortcuts pres-
ent themselves even when you’re not
Young Gauss’s “trick” for finding the sum of an arithmetic progression is usually explained looking for them. Suppose you adopt
in terms of adding pairs of elements from opposite ends of the sequence, so that all the pairs the standard primary-school algo-
have the same sum. One way to envision this process is to fold the series in half with a hairpin rithm, writing down all 100 numbers
bend. Another approach is to write the series twice, once in ascending and once in descending in a tall column and then starting work
order. A third method selects just a single pair of elements, typically the first and last, in order on the units digits. After the first 10
the calculate the average. Finally, some tellers of the story point out that the formula for sum- digits, the partial sum is 45; the next
ming the first n natural numbers also generates the nth triangular number; in effect, the sum
10 digits add another increment of 45,
is half the area of an n-by-n+1 rectangle.
bringing the partial sum to 90; then 45
algorithm that I suggested—folding age, you can easily find the sum. For more makes 135, and so on. How far
the sequence in half, then adding the most sets of numbers, this fact is not would a student get in this process be-
first and last elements, the second and very useful, because the only way to fore recognizing a repetitive pattern?
next-to-last, etc.—is not the only pos- calculate the average is first to calculate On turning to the tens digits, the pat-
sibility. A related but subtly different the sum and then divide by the number tern is even harder to miss: There are
algorithm is mentioned by many au- of elements. For an arithmetic progres- ten 1s followed by ten 2s, then ten 3s,
thors. The idea is to write down the sion, however, there is a shortcut: The etc. Surely any student who has the
series twice, once forward and once average over the entire series is equal skills to complete this task at all would
backward, and then add correspond- to the average of the first and last ele- not add those repeated numbers one
ing elements. For the familiar series ments (or the average of any other ele- by one. A more likely strategy would
1–100 this procedure yields 100 pairs ments symmetrically arrayed around be the one Sartorius implied when he
of 101, for a total of 10,100; then, since the midpoint). If this was Gauss’s secret wrote “count, multiply and add”—the
the original series was duplicated, we weapon, then his mental multiplication phrase that Helen Worthington Gauss
need to divide by 2, arriving at the cor- was not 50×101 but 100×50½. reduced to mere “adding.”
rect answer 5,050. The advantage of All three of these ideas—and a few On a small slate or a sheet of paper,
this scheme is that it works the same more besides—have been presented by it’s difficult to write 100 numbers in a
whether the length of the sequence is one author or another as the method that column, and so students would likely
odd or even, whereas the folding algo- Gauss discovered during his first arith- break the task down into subproblems.
rithm requires some fussy adjustments metic lesson. Expressed as formulas for Suppose you start by adding the num-
to deal with an odd-length series. summing consecutive integers from 1 bers from 1 to 10, for a sum of 55. Then
A third approach to the summa- through n, the three rules (folding, dou- the sum of 11 through 20 is 155, and 21
tion problem strikes me as better still. ble rows, average) look like this: through 30 yields 255. Again, how far
The root idea is that for any finite set would you continue before spotting
of numbers, whether or not the num- � �� the trend?
�
bers form an arithmetic progression, � � � Admittedly, these shortcuts can’t
the sum is equal to the average of all the Mathematically, it’s obvious they are match the elegance and ingenuity of
elements multiplied by the number of equivalent: For the same value of n, Gauss’s method. They are tied to the
elements. Thus if you know the aver- they produce the same answer. But the decimal representation of numbers,
204 American Scientist, Volume 94 © 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction
and they also don’t generalize as well Acknowledgments Hänselmann, Ludwig. 1878. Karl Fried-
rich Gauß: Zwolf Kapitel aus Seinem Leben.
to arithmetic progressions other than In collecting versions of the Gauss anecdote Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot.
lists of consecutive integers. But they I’ve been helped by dozens of librarians as Pappas, Theoni. 1993. Fractals, Googols and other
do remind us that there’s usually more well as friends and others. I particularly want Mathematical Tales. San Carlos, Calif.: Wide
than one good way to solve a problem. to thank Johannes Berg of the University of World Publishing/Tetra.
I suspect that only one kind of stu- Cologne; Caroline Grey of the Johns Hopkins Peterson, Ivars. 2004. Young Gauss. Science
dent would ever be likely to add the University libraries; Stephan Mertens of the News Online http://www.sciencenews.org/
numbers from 1 through 100 by per- University of Magdeburg; Ivo Schneider of articles/20041023/mathtrek.asp
forming 99 successive additions— the Bundeswehr University, Munich; Mar- Reich, Karin. 1977. Carl Friedrich Gauss: 1777–
1977. Translated by Patricia Crampton.
namely, a student using a computer or garet Tent of the Altamont School in Bir- Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Inter Nationes.
a programmable calculator. And for that mingham, Alabama, and Mary Linn Wernet Ryan, Jordan and Matthew. Math Mania: Jo-
student, the simplest strategy might in of the Northwestern State University librar- hann Carl Friedrich Gauss. http://library.
fact be the best one. ies in Natchitoches, Louisiana. thinkquest.org/J0110961/gauss.htm
We can hope that a modern Bütt- Sartorius von Waltershausen, W. 1856. Gauss:
ner—deprived of his whip, of course, Bibliography zum Gedächtnis. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
and teaching in a classroom where com- Listed here are only a few of the principal works con- Sartorius von Waltershausen, W. 1856, 1966.
sulted. A complete bibliography, along with excerpts Carl Friedrich Gauss: A Memorial. Translated
puters have replaced slates—would not by Helen Worthington Gauss. Colorado
from versions of the story, accompanies the Web
be drilling students on skills of such du- Springs, Colo.
version of the article.
bious utility as adding up a long series Tent, M. B. W. 2005. The Prince of Mathematics:
Bell, E. T. 1937. Men of Mathematics. New York:
of numbers by hand. But the new Bütt- Simon and Schuster. Carl Friedrich Gauss. Wellesley, Mass.: A K
ner just might ask his pupils to write Bieberbach, Ludwig. 1938. Carl Friedrich Gauß: Ein
Peters.
a program to calculate the sum of any Deutsches Gelehrtenleben. Berlin: Keil Verlag. Wußing, Hans. 1989. Carl Friedrich Gauss.
arithmetic progression. A new Gauss, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft.
Bühler, W. K. 1981. Gauss: A Biographical Study.
with the same keen insight, could cre- New York: Springer-Verlag.
ate a very efficient program based on Dunnington, G. Waldo. 1955, 2004. Carl Fried-
the pairing idea—and that feat still de- rich Gauss: Titan of Science. With additional For additional materials related to this column,
material by Jeremy Gray and Fritz-Egbert including excerpts from the works discussed,
serves the highest admiration. But the Dohse. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical As-
modern Gauss might not be the first to consult American Scientist Online:
sociation of America.
fling his or her laptop on the table and Hall, Tord. 1970. Carl Friedrich Gauss: A Bi- http://www.americanscientist.org/
cry “There it lies!” Writing that clever ography. Translated by Albert Froderberg. AssetDetail/50686
program—and testing and debugging Cambridge: MIT Press.
it, and proving its correctness—would
be no quicker than writing the straight-
forward step-by-step version. In this
respect, technology may be something
of an equalizer.
The Moral of the Tale

The story of Gauss and his conquest
of the arithmetic series has a natural
appeal to young people. After all, the
hero is a child—a child who outwits a
“virile brute.” For many students, that
is surely an inspiration. But I worry
a little that the constant repetition of
stories like this one may leave the im-
pression that mathematics is a game
suited only to those who go through
life continually throwing off sparks of
brilliance.
On first hearing this fable, most stu-
dents surely want to imagine them-
selves in the role of Gauss. Sooner or
later, however, most of us discover we
are one of the less-distinguished class-
mates; if we eventually get the right an-
swer, it’s by hard work rather than na-
tive genius. I would hope that the story
could be told in a way that encourages
those students to keep going. And per-
haps it can be balanced by other stories
showing there’s a place in mathematics
for more than one kind of mind.


American Scientist

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A reprint from

Gauss’s Day of Reckoning

L et me tell you a story, although

© 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction

© 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction

© 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction

The Moral of the Tale

© 2006 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction

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