Talk:Addition of natural numbers

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I'd move this page to Addition of natural numbers, if agreed, for a clearer title. --G

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OK, I'm not a real mathemetician, but I've never heard of a "hypothese". Is it a typo for "hypothesis"/"hypotheses", or just some specialist term I hadn't heard of? Don't want to go fixing it if it's right. -- John Owens 04:44 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] addition of odd numbers

I've never found an explanation about the sum of odd numbers, taking the first, second, third and so on. Let the odd numbers set be: {1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, ...}. Can someone tell me why the sum of n odd numbers, from the first, is always = n*n? For we have 1*1=1 (first number); 2*2=4 (first number [1] plus second number [3], [1+3=4]); 3*3=9 (1+3+5=9); 4*4=16 (1+3+5+7=16); 5*5=25 (1+3+5+7+9=25); 6*6=36 (1+3+5+7+9+11=36) and so on. So, if we have the sum of n successive odd numbers, starting by 1, than we'll have n to the square. I've never heard anything about such funny matter. Isn't it interesting? Will it be of some use? Time will tell.

Good observation, an explanation for the sum can be found at Arithmetic progression. --Salix alba (talk) 21:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)