We were challenged to try to create our own Ramanujan’s Magic Square but with our own birthdates. I attempted to do so and will take you through my thought process along the way. Seeing as I was born on October 1st, 1994 I started out with the top row with a sum of 124. From that point on I knew that 124 was my special number that I was now working toward for other sums. I chose to first work on creating just row and column sums of 124. I did so by taking 124 and subtracting 94 to get 30. I now knew that I had 3 squares left to fill to get a sum of 30. Knowing that 15 and 15 together give 30 I wrote down 15 and filled the other 2 spots with a sum of 2 numbers that gave 30; 12 and 3. I then saw I had 15 in the bottom right corner and subtracted 15 rom 124 to get 109. I now knew that I had 3 squares left to fill to get a sum of 109. I divided 109 by 3 to give me an idea of 3 numbers that add together to get 109. Seeing as we can’t use the same number twice I could not use what the calculator gave me. So I then decided I would use a number that had a 9 in the ones place so then I could add a multiple of ten to it to get 109. Exactly why on the bottom row we have 13 +17=30+79=109+15=124. I then went up the left column and immediately saw that 10 and 13 gave 23. I knew that in order to get 109 I needed 101. I had not used 51 or 50 yet so decided to use them. Then I attempted filling in the 4 middle squares. I did so by taking the 2 numbers already within the column, for instance 1 and 17 give 18 and 18 subtracted from 124 is 106. I knew that within the 2 squares I needed to have them add to that 106. It worked out to be 49 and 57. The next column included both 19 and 79 already to give 98. By subtracting 98 from 124 I knew that I needed to get two numbers that when added together gave 26. This worked with 22 and 4.
When attempting to alter my magic square in order to get diagonals, four corners, and the four middle squares to add to 124 I had much difficulty. I then realized that I probably should have started with the four corners after I wrote out my birthday in the first row. I also should have done the diagonals first before filling in the rest of the 4x4 square.
There are many different methods of going about creating a magic square but when it comes to creating a super magic square I almost feel that there are fewer ways to go about that seeing as there are many more requirements that are involved.