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Triangular number

son in a room with n + 1 people shakes hands once with


each person. In other words, the solution to the hand-
shake problem of n people is Tn.[4] The function T is
the additive analog of the factorial function, which is the
products of integers from 1 to n.
The number of line segments between closest pairs of
dots in the triangle can be represented in terms of the
number of dots or with a recurrence relation:

( )
n
Ln = 3Tn1 =3 ; Ln = Ln1 +3(n1), L1 = 0.
2

In the limit, the ratio between the two numbers, dots and
line segments is
The rst six triangular numbers
Tn 1
A triangular number or triangle number counts the lim = .
n Ln 3
objects that can form an equilateral triangle, as in the di-
agram on the right. The nth triangular number is the num-
ber of dots composing a triangle with n dots on a side, and 1 Relations to other gurate num-
is equal to the sum of the n natural numbers from 1 to n.
The sequence of triangular numbers (sequence A000217 bers
in the OEIS), starting at the 0th triangular number, is
Triangular numbers have a wide variety of relations to
0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78, 91, other gurate numbers.
105, 120, 136, 153, 171, 190, 210, 231, 253,
Most simply, the sum of two consecutive triangular num-
276, 300, 325, 351, 378, 406
bers is a square number, with the sum being the square of
the dierence between the two (and thus the dierence of
The triangle numbers are given by the following explicit
the two being the square root of the sum). Algebraically,
formulas:

( ) ( 2 ) ( 2
) ( ) ( 2

n
n(n + 1) n + 1 T +T n n (n 1) n1 n2 n n
Tn = k = 1+2+3+ +n = = , n n1 = + + + = + +
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
k=1
( )
where n+1 2 is a binomial coecient. It represents the Alternatively, the same fact can be demonstrated graphi-
number of distinct pairs that can be selected from n + 1 cally:
objects, and it is read aloud as "n plus one choose two. There are innitely many triangular numbers that are also
Carl Friedrich Gauss is said to have found this relation- square numbers; e.g., 1, 36, 1225. Some of them can be
ship in his early youth, by multiplying n/2 pairs of num- generated by a simple recursive formula:
bers in the sum by the values of each pair n + 1.[1] How-
ever, regardless of the truth of this story, Gauss was not Sn+1 = 4Sn (8Sn + 1) with S1 = 1.
the rst to discover this formula, and some nd it likely
that its origin goes back to the Pythagoreans 5th cen- All square triangular numbers are found from the recur-
tury BC.[2] The two formulae were described by the Irish sion
monk Dicuil in about 816 in his Computus.[3]
The triangular number Tn solves the handshake prob- Sn = 34Sn1 Sn2 + 2 with S0 = 0 and
lem of counting the number of handshakes if each per- S1 = 1.

1
2 2 OTHER PROPERTIES

2 Other properties
Triangular numbers correspond to the rst-degree case of
13 23
Faulhabers formula.
33 43 Alternating triangular numbers (1, 6, 15, 28, ...) are also
53 hexagonal numbers.
Every even perfect number is triangular (as well as hexag-
onal), given by the formula

1 Mp (Mp + 1)
2 Mp 2p1 =
2
= TMp
3
where Mp is a Mersenne prime. No odd perfect numbers
4 are known, hence all known perfect numbers are triangu-
lar.
5
For example, the third triangular number is (3 2 =) 6,
the seventh is (7 4 =) 28, the 31st is (31 16 =) 496,
A square whose side length is a triangular number can be parti-
tioned into squares and half-squares whose areas add to cubes.
and the 127th is (127 64 =) 8128.
This shows that the square of the nth triangular number is equal In base 10, the digital root of a nonzero triangular number
to the sum of the rst n cube numbers. is always 1, 3, 6, or 9. Hence every triangular number is
either divisible by three or has a remainder of 1 when
divided by nine:
Also, the square of the nth triangular number is the same
as the sum of the cubes of the integers 1 to n. This can 0=90
also be expressed as
1=90+1
3=90+3
( )2 6=90+6

n
n
3
k = k . 10 = 9 1 + 1
k=1 k=1
15 = 9 1 + 6
The sum of the all triangular numbers up to the nth tri- 21 = 9 2 + 3
angular number is the nth tetrahedral number, 28 = 9 3 + 1
36 = 9 4
45 = 9 5
n(n + 1)(n + 2)
. 55 = 9 6 + 1
6
66 = 9 7 + 3
More generally, the dierence between the nth m-gonal 78 = 9 8 + 6
number and the nth (m + 1)-gonal number is the (n 1)th
triangular number. For example, the sixth heptagonal 91 = 9 10 + 1
number (81) minus the sixth hexagonal number (66)
equals the fth triangular number, 15. Every other tri-
angular number is a hexagonal number. Knowing the tri- The digital root pattern for triangular numbers, repeating
angular numbers, one can reckon any centered polygonal every nine terms, as shown above, is 1, 3, 6, 1, 6, 3, 1,
number; the nth centered k-gonal number is obtained by 9, 9.
the formula
The converse of the statement above is, however, not al-
ways true. For example, the digital root of 12, which is
not a triangular number, is 3 and divisible by three.
Ckn = kTn1 + 1 If x is a triangular number, then ax + b is also a triangular
number, given a is an odd square and b = a 1/8
where T is a triangular number. Note that b will always be a triangular number, because
The positive dierence of two triangular numbers is a 8Tn + 1 = (2n + 1)2 , which yields all the odd squares
trapezoidal number. are revealed by multiplying a triangular number by 8 and
3

adding 1, and the process for b given a is an odd square this is equivalent to the handshake problem mentioned
is the inverse of this operation. above.
The rst several pairs of this form (not counting 1x + 0)In a tournament format that uses a round-robin group
are: 9x + 1, 25x + 3, 49x + 6, 81x + 10, 121x + 15, 169x stage, the number of matches that need to be played be-
+ 21, etc. Given x is equal to Tn, these formulas yieldtween n teams is equal to the triangular number Tn
Tn , Tn , Tn , Tn , and so on. . For example, a group stage with 4 teams requires
6 matches, and a group stage with 8 teams requires 28
The sum of the reciprocals of all the nonzero triangular
numbers is matches. This is also equivalent to the handshake prob-
lem and fully connected network problems.
One way of calculating the depreciation of an asset is the



1 1 sum-of-years digits method, which involves nding Tn,
=2 = 2.
n2 +n 2
n +n where n is the length in years of the assets useful life.
n=1 2 n=1
Each year, the item loses (b s) n y/Tn, where b
This can be shown by using the basic sum of a telescoping is the items beginning value (in units of currency), s is
series: its nal salvage value, n is the total number of years the
item is usable, and y the current year in the depreciation
schedule. Under this method, an item with a usable life
1
= 1. of n = 4 years would lose 4/10 of its losable value in the
n=1
n(n + 1) rst year, 3/10 in the second, 2/10 in the third, and 1/10
in the fourth, accumulating a total depreciation of 10/10
Two other interesting formulas regarding triangular num- (the whole) of the losable value.
bers are

Ta+b = Ta + Tb + ab
4 Triangular roots and tests for tri-
angular numbers
and
By analogy with the square root of x, one can dene the
Tab = Ta Tb + Ta1 Tb1 , (positive) triangular root of x as the number n such that
Tn = x:[7]
both of which can easily be established either by looking
at dot patterns (see above) or with some simple algebra.
8x + 1 1
In 1796, German mathematician and scientist Carl n=
2
Friedrich Gauss discovered that every positive integer is
representable as a sum of three triangular numbers (pos- which follows immediately from the quadratic formula.
sibly including T 0 = 0), writing in his diary his famous So an integer x is triangular if and only if 8x + 1 is a
words, "EHKA! num = + + ". Note that this square. Equivalently, if the positive triangular root n of x
theorem does not imply that the triangular numbers are is an integer, then x is the nth triangular number.[7]
dierent (as in the case of 20 = 10 + 10 + 0), nor that
a solution with exactly three nonzero triangular numbers
must exist. This is a special case of Fermats Polygonal 5 See also
Number Theorem.
The largest triangular number of the form 2k 1 is 4095 Polygonal number
(see RamanujanNagell equation). Square triangular number
Wacaw Franciszek Sierpiski posed the question as Tetrahedral number
to the existence of four distinct triangular numbers
in geometric progression. It was conjectured by Pol- Tetractys
ish mathematician Kazimierz Szymiczek to be impossi-
ble. This conjecture was proven by Fang and Chen in
2007.[5][6] 6 References
[1] Hayes, Brian. Gausss Day of Reckoning. American
3 Applications Scientist. Computing Science. Retrieved 2014-04-16.
[2] Eves, Howard. Webpage cites AN INTRODUCTION
A fully connected network of n computing devices re- TO THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS. Mathcen-
quires the presence of Tn cables or other connections; tral. Retrieved 28 March 2015.
4 7 EXTERNAL LINKS

[3] Esposito,M. An unpublished astronomical treatise by


the Irish monk Dicuil. Proceedings of the Royal Irish
Academy, XXXVI C. Dublin, 1907, 378-446.

[4] http://www.mathcircles.org/node/835

[5] Chen, Fang: Triangular numbers in geometric progression

[6] Fang: Nonexistence of a geometric progression that con-


tains four triangular numbers

[7] Euler, Leonhard; Lagrange, Joseph Louis (1810),


Elements of Algebra, 1 (2nd ed.), J. Johnson and Co., pp.
332335

7 External links
Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001), Arithmetic se-
ries, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer, ISBN
978-1-55608-010-4

Triangular numbers at cut-the-knot


There exist triangular numbers that are also square
at cut-the-knot
Weisstein, Eric W. Triangular Number.
MathWorld.

Hypertetrahedral Polytopic Roots by Rob Hubbard,


including the generalisation to triangular cube roots,
some higher dimensions, and some approximate for-
mulae
5

8 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses


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