

We all know that in order to calculate our current age, we do the following calculation: In order to find out whether that relationship between Age and Last Two Digits of Birth Year was true, I decided to start with what I already knew about two similar quantities: Age and Birth Year. However, once we strip the math trick naked, we can truly separate the math from the trick.īut is it true that Age + Last Two Digits of Birth Year = 120? Relationship Between Age and Birth year Obviously, this gives away the math that is working under the hood and that is why it was coined in an ambiguous manner.
#MAGIC CALCULATOR FORMULA PLUS#
“ Your age plus the last two digits of your birth year will give you 120. This means that the math teacher’s so-called “math trick” can be reworded in this less impressive way: In this form, it’s easy to see what is going on because this is the same as:Īge + Last Two Digits of Birth Year = 120 -(Equation 1) In pure mathematical form, the math teacher’s claim goes like this:Ĩ0 - Age + 40 = Last Two Digits of Birth Year Stripping the Math Trick nakedįirst of all, we need to ignore the mention of “bags of cement” since the math wouldn’t work otherwise. WARNING: The math is going to get fairly complex so readers are going to have to explore the math while reading. So with the preambles out of the way, let’s start the real math.

This article is an attempt to explain all the possible reasons why the math works or doesn’t work for any particular person. There will be a section of readers who would try this and it will work, while it will fail for others(it worked for me, by the way). Once we get rid of that, we can realize that this is a pretty neat math trick. The “bags of cement” was, in my opinion, put there for comedic effect. That’s blasphemy!”īut let’s ignore those intense details for a while. If you are anything like one of my friends who is very particular about tiny details, you would scream, “Hey! You can’t subtract ‘age’ from ‘bags of cement’. “80 bags of cement minus your age plus 40 will give you the last two digits of your birth year.
