Here's a nice mathematical magic trick based on properties of the Fibonacci sequence.

Give your friend a card with ten blank lines, numbered 1 through 10. Have your friend think of two numbers between 1 and 20 and write them down on the first 2 lines of the card. Now in each of the successive lines, have your friend write the sum of the previous two lines. For instance, in line 3, write the sum of lines 1 and 2. In line 4, write the sum of lines 2 and 3, etc. until finally in line 10, your friend has written the sum of lines 8 and 9.

Ask your friend to total the numbers. If you've practiced the Multiplication by 11 Fun Fact, you'll be able to tell your friend the total faster than she can add the numbers (because the total will be just 11 times the number in line 7). Also, you can announce the quotient of line 10 divided by line 9... to 2 decimal places, it will be 1.61!

Let's do an example. Suppose your friend tells gives you the numbers 3 and 7. Her card will then have these numbers: 1.7 2.3 3.10 4.13 5.23 6.36 7.59 8.95 9.154 10.249 The total is 649 (which is just 11 times 59, do this in your head with the Multiplication by 11 Fun Fact. The quotient 249/154 is 1.61 (to 2 decimal places). Presentation Suggestions: Write down the quotient 1.61 on another card, and place it in an envelope before the start of your magic trick. Then you can have your friend open that envelope after she has computed the quotient. The Math Behind the Fact: The trick works for the following reason. If the number X is in line 1, and the number Y is in line 2, then the number X+Y will be in line 3, the number (X+Y)+Y=(X+2Y) will be in line 4, and so on. Continuing, you will find that line 7 contains (5X+8Y), line 9 contains (21X+34Y), and line 10 contains (55X+88Y), which is indeed just 11 times line 7.

For the ratio of line 10 divided by line 9, we appeal to a property of "adding fractions badly": for positive numbers A, B, C, D where (A/B) < (C/D), it is a neat fact that the fraction you get by "adding badly": (A+C)/(B+D), must lie in between the values (A/B) and (C/D). So the ratio (55X+88Y)/(21X+34Y) must lie in between (55X/21X)=1.615... and (88Y/34Y)=1.619...

An even more stunning fact is that if you continue this leapfrog procedure with many more lines, then the ratio of successive lines will approach the golden ratio: 1.6180339... (If you know some linear algebra, this follows because the leapfrog procedure can be written as a 2-dimensional linear system of equations, and the largest eigenvalue of this system happens to be the golden ratio.)

Visual Multiplication with Lines

Here's a way to multiply numbers visually!

Suppose you want to multiply 22 by 13. Draw 2 lines slanted upward to the right, and then move downward to the right a short distance and draw another 2 lines upward to the right (see the magenta lines in Figure 1). Then draw 1 line slanted downward to the right, and then move upward to the right a short distance and draw another 3 lines slanted downward to the right (the cyan lines in Figure 1).

Now count up the number of intersection points in each corner of the figure. The number of intersection points at left (green-shaded region) will be the first digit of the answer. Sum the number of intersection points at the top and bottom of the square (in the blue-shaded region); this will be the middle digit of the answer. The number of intersection points at right (in the yellow-shaded region) will be the last digit of the answer.

This will work to multiply any two two-digit numbers, but if any of the green, blue, gold sums have 10 or more points in them, be sure to carry the tens digit to the left, just as you would if you were adding. Presentation Suggestions: First do simple examples like the one above; then try a problem that involves a carry, such as 21 x 34. The Math Behind the Fact: The method works because the number of lines are like placeholders (at powers of 10: 1, 10, 100, etc.), and the number of dots at each intersection is a product of the number of lines. You are then summing up all the products that are coefficients of the same power of 10. Thus the in the example

22 x 13 = ( 2*10 + 2 ) * ( 1*10 + 3 ) = 2*1*100 + 2*3*10 + 2*1*10 + 2*3 = 286.

The diagram displays this multiplication visually. In the green-shaded region there are 2*1=2 dots. In the blue-shaded region there are 2*3+2*1=8 dots. In the gold-shaded region there are 2*3=6 dots. This method does exactly what you would do if you wrote out the multiplication the long way and added the columns!

The method can be generalized to products of three-digit numbers (or more) using more sets of lines (and summing the dot groupings vertically and remembering to carry when needed). It can also be generalized to products of three-numbers using cubes of lines rather than squares! (Of course, it gets pretty unwieldy to use the method at that point.)

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