This showed up on digg, but turned out to be one of the most absurdly transparent “math magic trick” I’d ever seen. Imagine that your 7 digit phone number was written as abc-defg. This trick says to:
- Enter abc into the calculator.
- Multiply by 80. (Accumulator now contains 80*abc)
- Add 1. (Accumulator now contains 80*abc+1)
- Multiply by 250. (Accumulator now contains 20000*abc+250)
- Add in defg. (Accumulator now contains 20000*abc+250+defg)
- And add in defg again. (Accumlator contains 20000*abc+250+2*defg)
- Subtract out the 250. (Accumulator contains 20000*abc+2*defg)
- Divide by 2. (Wow! Accumulator contains 10000*abc+defg, your phone number! What a surprise!)
Weak. Really weak.