873 Math Blog

One day, in a small town, lived a girl. She had 2 cats. But one day, one of the cats ran away. The girl was very worried when she found him missing. So she went out to find him. It was a very nice day, and the girl looked up in the sky. She noticed a little pattern in the sky with the clouds. She could not tell what it was, so she tried climbing up a tree to get closer. But the tree was too high. Trying to measure it in her mind, she heard a meowing sound. It was her cat! She wanted to get to him, but he was very high up. So again she estimated how long it was. She thought it was about 6.4 feet tall. Her cat tried to come down, but it could not. So the girl started to climb up. She was lucky that there were lots of little branches to put her feet on. They even looked like they were almost perfectly lined up. There were about 18 of them. The girl went up 5, but then she dropped her bag. So she had to go down 5 to get it.

0 + 5 = 5 5 + (-5) = 0

Once she got it, she went up 8 branches. Then up 6 more.

0 + 8 = 8 8 + 6 = 14

She was almost there! But then her cat went down 5. Then back up one because he got scared.

18 + (-5) = 13 13 + 1 = 14

They were on the same branch. The girl grabbed her cat, and climbed down all branches.

14 + (-14) = 0

Then when the girl looked up in the sky again, the pattern was a lot more clear now. They were numbers. And they said:

0 + 5 = 5 5 + (-5) = 0 0 + 8 = 8 8 + 6 = 14 18 + (-5) = 13

13 + 1 = 14

At first the girl did not get it, but then she realized: she just did integers math! When she got home, her cat never ran away again.

The End