Firstly I'd like to propose a little puzzle, so that people can think about it

while I'm telling you a story; one of the big legends of mathematics.

The puzzle is fairly simple to state; I'd like you to imagine counting from 1 to a
million. After you've done that, try and add up the digits of all the counted
numbers. So, 10 would be considered 1, 11 would be considered 1+1 and so on until a
million.

Now, the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the most important mathematicians to
exist in the 19th century. He is usually reffered to as the greatest mathematician
since antiquity. A glimpse into what he is notable for includes his contributions
to the theory of magnetism, proving the fundamental theorem of algebra, deriving
the function representation of the normal distribution, and being PHD avisor to
Bernard Riemann, another very influential mathematician.

Gauss, born on april 13th, 1777 in lower Saxony, Germany. His family was poor, and
with his mother being illiterate, his birth date was never recorded. She only knew
that he was born on a wednesday, 8 days before The Feast of Ascension, 39 days
after Easter. Ridiculously, he found a way to compute the date on which Easter fell
each year, and then figured out his own birth date.

He was known to be a child prodigy, the main story being that in 1784, Gauss
figured out how to sum all the integers from 1 to 100 by using the n(n+1)/2
formula.

1796 was quite the year for Carl. He advanced modular arithmetic, he was the first
to prove the quadratic reciprocity law, and most unbelievably, he showed that a
regular polygon could be constructed by a compass and straight edge, if the number
of its sides is the product of distinct fermat primes at a power of two.

He didn't complete university, leaving Gurtigan without a degree in 1798. He did

get it in 1799 however, going on to prove the fundamental theorem of algebra
formulated over the real line, as a submission for his PhD.

He got married to Johanna Astaf on october 18 1805. He continued in 1832 on the

theory of terrestrial magnetism, leading to the discovery of Kirkhoff's laws.

As is quite clear, Gauss made increddible contributions to mathematics, but he also

managed to make increddible contributions to his pockets. He had invested in bonds
that were very successful. After this series of investments, he focused on
mathematical physics, and did this until his death in feb 23rd, 1855, passing in
his sleep.

Answer:
Pair 0 with 999 999, 1 with 999 998, 2 with 999 997 etc
You'll end up with half a million pairs of 999 999
9+9+9+9+9+9 is 54, times half a million is 27 million. We left out 1 000 000, so
the answer is 27 million and one, using Gauss's trick.