Q 01/05

Which name did a nine-year-old boy coin for the number 10¹⁰⁰?

A) Zillion

B) Centillion

C) Googol

D) Myriad

Answer · why

C) Googol

Googol was the invention of Milton Sirotta, nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner, and the search engine Google later took its name from a respelling ...

Q 02/05

In a famous legend about doubling, grains of wheat are laid one, two, four and so on across the squares of what?

A) A chessboard

B) A Go board

C) A crossword grid

D) A bingo card

Answer · why

A) A chessboard

A chessboard filled this way would hold 2⁶⁴ − 1 grains, more than 18 quintillion, and in some tellings the ruler has the inventor who asked for them e...

Q 03/05

Which French philosopher, namesake of Cartesian coordinates, introduced today's raised-number notation for powers?

A) Blaise Pascal

B) René Descartes

C) Denis Diderot

D) Nicolas Malebranche

Answer · why

B) René Descartes

René Descartes set out the notation in La Géométrie in 1637, yet he kept writing squares the long way, as a letter repeated twice.

Q 04/05

Any nonzero number raised to the power of zero, whether 9⁰ or 25⁰, always equals which value?

A) 0

B) 1

C) 9

D) 25

Answer · why

B) 1

1 is the result because dividing a power by itself, such as 9² ÷ 9², subtracts the exponents to leave 9⁰, and any number divided by itself is 1.

Q 05/05

Which rule of thumb, named after an Intel co-founder, says transistor counts on a chip double about every two years?

A) Murphy's law

B) Metcalfe's law

C) Amdahl's law

D) Moore's law

Answer · why

D) Moore's law

Moore's law began as a 1965 magazine forecast of doubling every year, an exponential pace that Gordon Moore himself slowed to every two years in 1975.