Math Trivia Questions and Answers
Q: What mathematical symbol did math whiz Ferdinand von Lindemann
determine to be a transcendental number in 1882?
A: Pi.
Q: What do you call an angle more than 90 degrees and less than
180 degrees?
A: Obtuse.
Q: What's the top number of a fraction called?
A: The numerator.
Q: What Greek math whiz noticed that the morning star and evening
star were one and the same, in 530 B.C.?
A: Pythagoras.
Q: What's a polygon with four unequal sides called?
A: A quadrilateral.
Q: What's a flat image that can be displayed in three dimensions?
A: A hologram.
Q: What number does "giga" stand for?
A: One billion.
Q: What digit did Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi give to the
West around 800 B/B.?
A: Zero.
Q:
What word describes a number system with a base of two?
A: Binary.
Q: How many equal sides does an icosahedron have?
A:
Twenty.
Q:
What do mathematicians call a regular polygon with eight
sides?
A: An octagon.
Q: What T-word is defined in
geometry as "a straight line
that touches a curve but continues on with crossing it"?
A: Tangent.
Q: What geometrical shape forms the hole that fits and allen
wrench?
A: The hexagon.
Q: What number is an improper fraction always greater than?
A: One.
Q: What two letters are both symbols for 1,000?
A: K and M.
Q: What's short for "binary digit"?
A: Bit.
Q: What century did mathematicians first use plus and minus
signs?
A: The sixteenth.
Q: What number, a one followed by 100 zeros, was first used by
nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in
1940?
A: Googol.
Q: What handy mathematical instrument's days were numbered when
the pocket calculator made the scene in the 1970s?
A: The Slide rule's.
What is mathematics?
A: Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.
Mathematicians seek and use patterns to formulate what?
A: New conjectures.
Around 300 BC, Euclid introduced the axiomatic method still used in mathematics today, consisting of what?
A: Definition, axiom, theorem, and proof.
As evidenced by tallies found on bone, in addition to recognizing how to count physical objects, prehistoric
peoples may have also recognized how to do what?
A: Count abstract quantities, like time – days, seasons, years.
Evidence for more complex mathematics does not appear until around when?
A: 3000 BC, when the Babylonians and
Egyptians began using arithmetic, algebra and
geometry for taxation, financial calculations, building and construction, and for astronomy.
The most ancient mathematical texts from
Mesopotamia and Egypt are from when?
A: 2000–1800 BC.
The German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as what?
A: "The Queen of the Sciences".
Most of the mathematical notation in use today was not invented until when?
A: The 16th century.
The study of space originates with what?
A: Geometry, in particular, Euclidean geometry.
Trigonometry is the branch of mathematics that deals with what relationships?
A: The relationship between the sides and the angles of triangles and with the trigonometric functions.
Quantity and space both play a role in what?
A: Analytic geometry, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry.
What were developed in order to clarify the foundations of mathematics?
A: The fields of mathematical logic and set theory.
The most notable achievement of
Islamic mathematics was the development of what?
A: Algebra.
Understanding and describing change is a common theme in the natural sciences, and what was developed as a powerful
tool to investigate it?
A: Calculus.
Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as what?
A: Statistics and game theory.
Linear algebra, which is the general study of what?
A: Vector spaces, whose elements called vectors, have both quantity and direction.
What is arguably the most prestigious award in mathematics?
A: The Fields Medal, established in
1936 and awarded every four years (except around World War II) to as many as four individuals.
The Fields Medal is often considered a mathematical equivalent to what?
A: The Nobel Prize.