Add the Last Digit

Years 7–8
Difficulty
Strands Number and Algebra
Topics Number and place value, Patterns and Algebra
ACARA ACMNA123, ACMNA133, ACMNA183
Keywords Patterns and sequences, digits
Strategies Look for a pattern, make a list or table, simplify the problem

Start with the number 1 and create the sequence

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 22, 24, 28, …

where each number is the sum of the previous number and

its final digit.

How many numbers in the sequence are less than 1000?

Launch
Objective: understand the problem

Ask students to read the question.

Invite students to explain what the problem is asking in their own words.

Discuss the key concepts:

 Is there enough information in the list of numbers to immediately answer the question?
No, we need to list some more.
 Do you think we will need to list all the numbers up to 1000?
No, hopefully not!
 So, what should we look out for?
Any kind of pattern that will help unlock the answer without listing too many numbers.
 Is this kind of pattern easy to describe with algebra?
Maybe not. The last digit keeps changing so the rule keeps changing. (However, see
‘Solve’, Alternative 2.)

© Australian Maths Trust 2020 1

 Test your understanding:
 What are the next two numbers in the sequence?
The next two are 28 + 8 =
36 and 36 + 6 =42 .
Possible pitfalls:
 A pattern should be spotted within 5 – 10 additional terms. After this, students need to be
exploring ways to perform the count more efficiently.
 The first number, 1, does not fit the pattern of the rest of the sequence, so care must be
taken to manually include it in the count.

Solve
Objective: devise a plan and carry it out

Suggested enabling prompts:

 Can you spot a pattern from the given numbers? Try listing a few more.
With the next five numbers added, the list is 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 22, 24, 28, 36, 42, 44, 48, 56, … .
 Can you spot a pattern now? Which part of the numbers do you think we should focus on?
Given that the pattern involves adding the final digit, the final digit is a useful place to look.
 Look at (or write down a list of) the final digit of each number. What do you notice?
The final digits are 1, 2, 4, 8, 6, 2, 4, 8, 6, … . Ignoring the 1 at the beginning, there is a
block of 4 digits which repeats indefinitely: 2, 4, 8, 6.
 How long does it take to repeat the pattern of final digits? Have a look at the first digit of
each number (including a zero for numbers less than 10, if it helps). What do you notice?
From 2 onwards (ignoring the 1) the first digits are 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5. There are
3 numbers with each even first digit (less than 10, or in the twenties or forties) and only 1
number with each odd first digit (in the teens, thirties or fifties). Equivalently, ignoring the 1,
there is a jump of 20 from one block of 4 repeated final digits to the next.
 Will anything change when we go from two-digit to three-digit numbers?
No, only the units and tens digits are involved in the pattern, so it will continue in the same
way after we reach 96, 102, 104, … .
 How many times does the repeating pattern occur using numbers under 1000?
There are 1000 ÷ 20 =
50 blocks of the pattern of final digits.
 So how many numbers are there altogether? Remember that not every number fits the
pattern.
There are 50 × 4 numbers in the repeating blocks, plus the number 1 at the beginning.

2 © Australian Maths Trust 2020

 Solution

Alternative 1

Not including the number 1, the sequence goes

2, 4, 8, 16, 22, 24, 28, 36, 42, 44, 48, 56, …

Note that the units, twenties, forties, sixties and eighties will have three numbers each and the
tens, thirties, fifties, seventies and nineties will have one number each. To reach 1000, this pattern
will continue 10 times, contributing 10 × (3 × 5 + 1× 5) =200 numbers to the sequence.

Including the 1 at the beginning, there are 201 such numbers in total.

Alternative 2

The last digits follow the cycle 2, 4, 8, 6, 2, 4, 8, 6, . . . and so the sequence goes

1; 2, 4, 8, 16; 22, 24, 28, 36; . . .

. . . ; (20n + 2), (20n + 4), (20n + 8), (20n + 16); . . .

. . . ; 982, 984, 988, 996

where the first quadruplet is at n = 0 and the last quadruplet less than 1000 is at n = 49 . So,
including the initial 1, there are 1 + 50 × 4 =201 such numbers.

Reflect
Objective: look back and check

Suggested reflection prompts:

 Can you check that your answer is correct?
Check a few more terms by hand to double check that the pattern 2, 4, 8, 6 does continue,
as claimed. Write a spreadsheet or program to generate the full list (see ‘Extend’).
 What else did you notice about the numbers in the sequence? Can you explain it?
Apart from 1, they are all even (from 2 onwards, we are adding an even number to its even
final digit, so the next number is always even). Three out of four numbers in the repeating
blocks are multiples of 4 (we can explain this using the following divisibility test for 4: ‘even
digit followed by a 0, 4 or 8, or odd digit followed by a 2 or 6’ ). Doubling a number in the list
produces another number in the list if, and only if, the second last digit is even (doubling a
number of the form ‘even-2’ gives ‘even-4’, ‘even-4’ gives ‘even-8’ and ‘even-8’ gives ‘odd-
6’, all of which are valid numbers; but doubling ‘odd-6’ gives ‘odd-2’, which is not valid).
 What other questions can we ask?
How many terms are less than some other number? How do we find which number occurs
in a given position in the sequence? What if we change the rule? (See ‘Extend’.)

© Australian Maths Trust 2020 3

 Extend
Objective: build on what you have learned

Suggested extending prompts:

 How many numbers in the sequence are less than one million?
There are 1000 000 ÷ 20 × 4 + 1 =200 001 such numbers.

 How many numbers in the sequence are less than 727?

The last complete block of 4 final digits ended at 716. The remaining terms are 722 and
724. So there are 720 ÷ 20 × 4 + 1 + 2 = 147 such numbers.
 What is the 100th number in the sequence?
Ignoring the 1, the 100 numbers could be split into 100 ÷ 4 = 25 blocks of repeating digits.
Each block skips by 20, so this gets us in the ballpark of 25 × 20 =500 . The term which is
closest to, but less than, 500 is actually 496. But remembering that the sequence started
with 1, we need to go one term further back, to 488.
 What is the 519th number in the sequence?
Here it is useful to break up the sequence into blocks of size 1 (the first term, namely 1),
then size 516 (made up of repeating blocks of size 4, since 516 is a multiple of 4), and
finally size 2 (two more terms to get us to the 519th). Since 516 ÷ 4 × 20 = 2580 , the 517th
term is 2576, the 518th is 2582 and the 519th is 2584.
 Suppose that, instead of 1, the sequence starts with a different odd number. What could the
starting number have been if 38 appears in the sequence?
The last digit of 8 could have arisen from a 4 or a 9, giving two possibilities for the previous
number: 34 or 29. Similarly, 34 could have arisen from 32 or 27. Continuing in this way, any
odd numbers found are a possible starting number, and any even numbers must be traced
further back. Exhausting all possibilities, we find the following list: 3, 7, 9, 11, 23, 27, 29, 31.
 Why is it not very interesting to start with a number whose final digit is 5?
The next number ends in a zero, so the rest of the numbers never change: 25, 30, 30, … .
 Starting 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, …, a new type of sequence is formed by adding each number to
the number formed by its final two digits, instead of one. How long does it take for there to
be a repeating pattern in the digits? How many such numbers are less than one million?
Ignoring 1 and 2, the last two digits occur in this repeating block of length 20:
04, 08, 16, 32, 64, 28, 56, 12, 24, 48, 96, 92, 84, 68, 36, 72, 44, 88, 76, 52.
The first block ends at 952 and the next begins at 1004, so 20 numbers in every thousand
are added to the sequence. Including 1 and 2, there are 1000 000 ÷ 1000 × 20 + 2 = 20 002
such numbers less than one million.
 Starting 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 17, …, a new type of sequence is formed by adding each number to
its first digit, instead of its final digit. How many such numbers are less than 1000?
Here there is no repeating pattern that works throughout the whole sequence. However, in
batches of various sizes, the numbers skip by 1, 2, …, 9, according to their first digit, and
this helps simplify the count. Beyond 100, it gets much easier. The final answer is 308.

4 © Australian Maths Trust 2020

 Suggested investigations:
 Here is a method to generate as many terms of the original sequence as you like using a
spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
o In cell A1, enter the number 1
o In cell A2, enter the following instruction: =A1+VALUE(RIGHT(A1,1))
o Copy cell A2 into the rest of column A, as far as you want to go (to do this quickly,
select cell A2, then click and drag the square in the bottom-right corner)
 Check that the 201st term is the largest one under 1000.
 What does the RIGHT command do? What does the VALUE command do?
RIGHT(A1,1) takes 1 character from the right-end of the entry in A1, that is, the last
digit. But because this is a command designed for manipulating text, the output needs to be
converted to a number with the VALUE command, otherwise the addition won’t work.
 Here is an alternative instruction for cell A2: =A1+MOD(A1,10). Investigate how this
works. What if you change the 10 to some other number?
 Use a spreadsheet to check your answers to the other challenges above. You may need to
adapt the code accordingly.

Connect
Objective: apply to the real world

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) is regarded by many as the father of computing. His work on an
automated calculating machine called the Difference Engine, and the development of plans for a
more sophisticated programmable machine called the Analytical Engine, laid the foundations for
much of modern computer science. Babbage’s work was motivated by the desire to reduce human
error in the complex calculations needed in science, engineering and manufacturing which, until
then, had largely been performed by hand. In the earliest days of his research, he devised simple
machines that could automatically generate lists of numbers according to certain rules—it turns out
that one of the sequences which inspired him to further investigate the capabilities of his machines
is the one appearing in this problem! See the extract below from a paper written in 1826, more than
a century before the construction of the world’s first electronic computers during World War II.
The subject of investigation on which I have entered in the following Paper, had its origin in a
circumstance which is, I believe, as yet singular in the history of mathematical science, although there
exists considerable probability, that it will not long remain an isolated example of analytical enquiries,
suggested and rendered necessary by the progress of machinery adapted to numerical computation.
Some time has elapsed since I was examining a small machine I had constructed, by which a Table,
having its second difference constant, might be computed by mechanical means. In considering the
various changes which might be made in the arrangement of its parts, I observed an alteration, by
which the calculated series would always have its second difference equal to the unit’s figure of the
last computed term of the series: other forms of the machine would make the first or third, or generally
any given difference equal to the unit’s figure of the term last computed; … I did not, at that time,
possess the means of making these alterations which I had contemplated, but I immediately
proceeded to write down one of the series which would have been calculated by the machine thus
altered; and commencing with one of the most simple, I formed the series. [2, 4, 8, 16, 22, 24, 28, …]
Charles Babbage Esq. M.A. (1826) XL. On the determination of the general term of a new class of
infinite series, The Philosophical Magazine, 67:336, 259-265.

© Australian Maths Trust 2020 5