"Presto" math trick in Java


According to Futility Closet, if you start with a 3 digit and place it next to the same number to form a 6 digit number, you can divide the 6 digit number by 7, 11, and then 13 and you will end up with the original 3 digit number and no remainders. For example, by taking the number 412 and making it 412412 and then doing the divisions, you will end up with 412. I wrote a small program in Java to test it.

The Code

public class Main
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        for(int i = 100; i <= 999; i++)
        {
            //get the number, and "double" it
            int number = Integer.parseInt(Integer.toString(i) + Integer.toString(i));

            //successively divided by 7, 11, then 13
            System.out.print((i) + "\t");
            System.out.print((number) + "\t");
            System.out.print((number /= 7) + "\t");
            System.out.print((number /= 11) + "\t");
            System.out.print(number /= 13);

            //is the result what we expect? (input == output)
            if(i == number)
            {
                System.out.print("\tCorrect\n");
            }
            else
            {
                System.out.print("\tIncorrect");
                break;
            }
        }
    }
}

In this snippet, we loop through all 3 digit numbers (100 to 999) and output the results of each operation in a tab separated column. If the result (output) is the same as the input, we print correct and continue with the loop. Otherwise, we print incorrect and break.

Give it a try!

See also