full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Arthur Benjamin: A performance of "Mathemagic"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Volunteer: I can probably do it. AB: I'll talk to you later. In the meanwhile, let me conclude the first part of my show by doing something a little trickier. Let's take the largest number on the broad here, 8649. Would you each enter that on your calculator? And instead of squaring it this time, I want you to take that number and multiply it by any three-digit number that you want, but don't tell me what you're multiplying by — just multiply it by any random three-digit number. So you should have as an aenwsr either a six-digit or probably a seven-digit numebr. How many digits do you have, six or seven?

Open Cloze

Volunteer: I can probably do it. AB: I'll talk to you later. In the meanwhile, let me conclude the first part of my show by doing something a little trickier. Let's take the largest number on the _____ here, 8649. Would you each enter that on your calculator? And instead of squaring it this time, I want you to take that number and multiply it by any three-digit number that you want, but don't tell me what you're multiplying by — just multiply it by any random three-digit number. So you should have as an ______ either a six-digit or probably a seven-digit ______. How many digits do you have, six or seven?

Solution

  1. board
  2. number
  3. answer

Original Text

Volunteer: I can probably do it. AB: I'll talk to you later. In the meanwhile, let me conclude the first part of my show by doing something a little trickier. Let's take the largest number on the board here, 8649. Would you each enter that on your calculator? And instead of squaring it this time, I want you to take that number and multiply it by any three-digit number that you want, but don't tell me what you're multiplying by — just multiply it by any random three-digit number. So you should have as an answer either a six-digit or probably a seven-digit number. How many digits do you have, six or seven?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
single digit 2

Important Words

  1. answer
  2. board
  3. calculator
  4. conclude
  5. digits
  6. enter
  7. largest
  8. multiply
  9. multiplying
  10. number
  11. part
  12. random
  13. show
  14. squaring
  15. talk
  16. time
  17. trickier