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It is arithmetic because it is going up by adding 2 to each number.
The Devil's Arithmetic, based on the book by Jane Yolen, is about a girl who is transported from modern-day to 1940 Nazi-occupied Poland. The meaning of the title, comes from the numbers on the clothing that the prisoners in the concentration camp. The characters in the book put meaning to the numbers to help make them a little more personal, to identify better with them. They talk about how the numbers were a part of the Devil's Arithmetic. The Devil, because they knew what was going on, and if they weren't saved, would be killed. Arithmetic because of the numbers.
72
There are 28 handshakes if everyone shakes hands with everyone else. It is an arithmetic progression and can be solved with the equation Sn=(1+(n-1))(n-1)/2 where Sn is the total sum of handshakes for n people. NB: I have used n-1 instead of n in the equation for the sum of an arithmetic progression, because you're not really going to shake hands with yourself, so you don't include the nth term, in this case 8. Alternatively, you can solve this geometrically by drawing an octagon, drawing lines between all the vertices, and then adding all the lines up.
Obviously, you are a stubborn person too lazy to just go get a piece of paper & a pencil & just do the work. Or, you're too lazy to just go & pick up a calculator, instead of going all the way to the computer, to WikiAnswers to find the perfect answer.=)