February 3, 2006 -- This is
the solution to Andy Naughton's trick at http://trunks.secondfoundation.org/files/psychic.swf.
Congratulations for a well
conceived one! (And thanks to Terri for bringing my attention to
it.)
You choose a number AB (where A is the
first digit and B the second digit). The result of your calculation
will be:
(10A +B) - (A + B) = 9A.
This means that, whatever B you choose,
your answer can only be one of the following 9 numbers (given
A between 1 and 9): 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81. If you check the
table of numbers and symbols on the magic page, you can observe that
the symbols change at each round in order to confuse you, but in any
given
round, the symbol is always the
same for these 9 numbers. Your calculation necessarily gives a result
associated with the unique symbol assigned to the
9 possible
solutions.
"Mathematics is a language."
-- J. Willard
Gibbs
