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Mystery of the Week: What number is at the bottom of the faculty totals?
Germany🔬 Science14 days ago

Mystery of the Week: What number is at the bottom of the faculty totals?

The article presents a mathematical puzzle asking for the last digit of the sum of factorials from 1! to 2026!. It explains that calculating all 2026 terms is unnecessary because factorials starting from 5! end in zero due to being divisible by 10. This simplifies the problem to finding the last digit of the sum of the first four factorials (1! + 2! + 3! + 4!), which equals 33. The solution concludes that the final digit of the entire sum is 3.

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1 reports

Der Spiegel logoDer SpiegelIndependentCenter14 days ago
Mystery of the Week: What number is at the bottom of the faculty totals?

The article presents a mathematical puzzle asking for the last digit of the sum of factorials from 1! to 2026!. It explains that calculating all 2026 terms is unnecessary because factorials starting from 5! end in zero due to being divisible by 10. This simplifies the problem to finding the last digit of the sum of the first four factorials (1! + 2! + 3! + 4!), which equals 33. The solution concludes that the final digit of the entire sum is 3.

Bias read (Center): The article discusses a purely mathematical puzzle with no political implications. The content is neutral and focuses solely on solving a numerical problem using logical reasoning.

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