Mr McVey’s Mysterious Maths – Words & Letters Edition

For this challenge, I’ve set you a couple of word or letter-based problems.

As ever, any student who can provide me with the correct solutions either by email or in person, will earn themselves a fantastic Head’s Breakfast!

Good luck!

Problem 1 – Wordy Sequence

When we write numbers as words, we can count the letters in those words, and get more numbers!

For example, 700 can be written as SEVEN HUNDRED, which is twelve letters long.

Bearing this in mind, can you figure out what this sequence represents and work out what comes next?

1, 4, 3, 11, 15, 13, 17, 24, ?

Problem 2 – Letters and Numbers

In the tenth century, the Persian mathematician Al-Karaji showed how we could use letters to represent numbers, paving the way for what we now call algebra.

In the equation A – B = 1, the value of A could be 4 and the value of B could be 3, because 4 – 3 = 1. This wouldn’t work the other way round though because 3 – 4 does not equal 1!

In each of the questions below, match the numbers you have been given to the capital letters to make the sums correct.

Mr McVey

Maths Department

Share!