'A' 'B' 'C' 'D' and COUNTING

We often say or hear other people say that ‘he doesn’t know the ABC of mathematics’ which means that he doesn’t know even the fundamentals of the subject. But did you know that the letter ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, or ‘D’ does not appear anywhere in the spellings of 1 to 99?

The letter ‘D’ comes for the first time in HUNDRED!

In addition, the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ do not appear anywhere in the spellings of 1 to 999. The letter ‘A’ comes for the first time in THOUSAND. Incredible! Isn’t it?

What about ‘B’ and ‘C’? If you count each number and check the spelling one by one, it will take many months to, finally, find that the letter ‘B’ appears for the first time only in BILLION!

Now, let’s consider ‘C’. No doubt a number of words related to mathametics contain the letter C such as calculate, arithmetic, computing, circumcircle, con and so on. Even the terms ‘mathematics’ and ‘counting’ themselves have ‘C’ in them. But, surprising to say, the letter ‘C’ does not show up anywhere in the spellings of the entire English counting!

Unbelievable? Want to give it a try? Then start counting. O-n-e, T-w-o, T-h-r-e-e………