Brent Yorgey on Nostr: I found 7yo drawing on a sheet of paper. He had drawn 8 dots in a circle and was ...

I found 7yo drawing on a sheet of paper. He had drawn 8 dots in a circle and was drawing lines between all possible pairs of dots. I told him it was called \(K_8\) (and showed him how to write the 8 as a subscript). He thought that was cool and labelled his drawing. I then asked him to draw \(K_3, K_2, K_1\), and \(K_0\). He did not even hesitate at \(K_0\) but gleefully wrote \(K_0\) labelling a blank part of the paper.

He then wanted to draw \(K_{10}\) but I told him it would take too long (we had to leave shortly). I tried to explain something about how the number of lines grew quadratically, though not in those words of course. "Oh yeah," he said, "like how \(K_8\) has eight times seven lines." He double counted them, of course, but I was impressed he thought of a way to count them at all.

Looks like we have another budding mathematician on our hands! #math #kids