Casting out nines  

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The expression "casting out nines" may refer to any one of three arithmetical procedures:

  • Adding the decimal digits of a positive whole number, while optionally ignoring any 9s or digits which sum to a multiple of 9. The result of this procedure is a number which is smaller than the original whenever the original has more than one digit, leaves the same remainder as the original after division by nine, and may be obtained from the original by subtracting a multiple of 9 from it. The name of the procedure derives from this latter property.
  • Repeated application of this procedure to the results obtained from previous applications until a single-digit number is obtained. This single-digit number is called the "digital root" of the original. If a number is divisible by 9, its digital root is 9. Otherwise, its digital root is the remainder it leaves after being divided by 9.
  • A sanity test in which the above-mentioned procedures are used to check for errors in arithmetical calculations. The test is carried out by applying the same sequence of arithmetical operations to the digital roots of the operands as are applied to the operands themselves. If no mistakes are made in the calculations, the digital roots of the two resultants should be the same. If they are different, therefore, one or more mistakes must have been made in the calculations.

History

A form of casting out nines known to ancient Greek mathematicians was described by the Roman bishop Hippolytus (170–235) in The Refutation of all Heresies, and more briefly by the Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus (c.245–c.325) in his commentary on the Introduction to Arithmetic of Nicomachus of Gerasa. Both Hippolytus's and Iamblichus's descriptions, though, were limited to an explanation of how repeated digital sums of Greek numerals were used to compute a unique "root" between 1 and 9. Neither of them displayed any awareness of how the procedure could be used to check the results of arithmetical computations.

The earliest known surviving work which describes how casting out nines can be used to check the results of arithmetical computations is the Mahâsiddhânta, written around 950 by the Indian mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata II (c.920–c.1000 ).

Writing about 1020, the Persian polymath, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (c.980–1037), also gave full details of what he called the "Hindu method" of checking arithmetical calculations by casting out nines.

In Synergetics, R. Buckminster Fuller claims to have used casting-out-nines "before World War I." Fuller explains how to cast out nines and makes other claims about the resulting 'indigs,' but he fails to note that casting out nines can result in false positives.

The method bears striking resemblance to standard signal processing and computational error detection and error correction methods, typically using similar modular arithmetic in checksums and simpler check digits.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Casting out nines" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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