Without using any arithmetical symbols (+, -, *, /, or similar; other math symbols; decimal comma or periods; letters; even parentheses) or, in short, anything but the digits, build a number with the digits 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, that is equal to a number built with the digits 2, 4, 6 and 8 (each digit used once and only once).

Note: This is not a trick. It was extracted from a book edited by Angela Dunn, a mathematician who gathered problems that appeared in many scientific periodical revues!

This doesn't work perfectly but what I decided to do was to take the mirror image of the digit 5 and then the numbers 937 if you then use the 1 to cross the horizontal line on the 7 and turn it all upside down you sort of get a number that looks like 4862 although the 3 doesn't look a lot like 8 but if you use it next to the 9 then it sort of does.

Posted by Lisa on 2005-07-01 08:41:35