Fun Math Number Tricks

Math Number Tricks help teach basic math skills.  Most of us appreciate a good magic trick and the thing that's cool about this kind of trick is it's hard for the person you do it on to figure it out.

Kids love learning magic tricks.  It's fun to amaze friends and relatives and have them scratch their heads and think "wonder how he did that one?"

Finding Someone’s Age - Number Trick

  • Ask the person to multiply the first number of his or her age by 5.
  • Tell them to add 3.
  • Now tell them to double this figure.
  • Finally, have the person add the second number of his or her age to the figure and ave them tell you their answer.
  • Deduct 6 and you will have their age.

Math Number Tricks are great to use in the classroom!


Grey Elephants in Denmark - Number Trick

  • Pick a number between 1 & 10.
  • Multiply by 9.
  • If the result is a two digit number, add the two digits together.
  • Subtract 5 from the resulting number.
  • Beginning with the letter A as 1, count over in the Alphabet that many letters ( I usually will count a few out loud " A is 1, B is 2, C is 3.")
  • Now think of a Country that begins with your letter (Only big Baseball fans, or Cigar smokers will get the Dominican Republic, the rest will get Denmark)
  • Take the second letter in your county and think of a Circus Animal that begins with that letter.
  • Wait a couple of seconds and say "There are no Elephants in Denmark!"

Explanation: The result of step 3 (adding together the digits of a multiple of nine) will always yield "9", so subtracting 5 yields 4, which in turn forces the letter "D".


Determine Your Birthday - Math Number Trick

Just follow the steps with a calculator or by hand for building math skills! Go ahead and try the trick without cheating!

  • Add 18 to your birth month
  • Multiply by 25
  • Subtract 333
  • Multiply by 8
  • Subtract 554
  • Divide by 2
  • Add your birth date
  • Multiply by 5
  • Add 692
  • Multiply by 20
  • Add only the last two digits of your birth year
  • Subtract 32940 to get your birthday!

The answer’s format is: month/day/year.  For example, an answer of 123199 means that you were born on December 31, 1999.  If the answer is not right, you followed the directions incorrectly or lied about your birthday.


PICK POCKET NUMBER TRICK: Pretty cool math trick to impress your friends and family by correctly guessing the amount of change they have in their pockets!

MIND READING NUMBER TRICK: Great trick.  Takes you to another page. But come on back afterwords.   And just keep clicking on the little guy in the bottom right hand corner and he'll tell you what to do.

Math number tricks are great for practicing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Number Tricks: Check out more cool number tricks that students will love and will of course boost their mental math skills.

They have fun doing the math number tricks, but at the same time they are getting better at doing the math.  Make sure they don't use a calculator...sort of defeats the purpose.  You might also want to see the main elementary math games page or the middle school math games page.


Go To main Math Tricks Page

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