you have no idea what you are talking about
Convince me why i should take math seriously
Landon Richardson
Hudson Wood
Nolan Cooper
Ok I see how you got it but that's just mathturbation right? 1+2+3+4+... Doesn't actually equal -1/12 in the real world so there has to be a flaw in the formulation or a law of math. Or is this just something wrist deal with cautiously.
Lincoln Reed
gee I wonder why people didn't think of assigning to zeta(1) a value of y-intercept of
1/1+ 1/2 +1/3 + ....
Jace Martinez
This meme needs to die. A mathematician applies analytic extension to fill in gaps for a specific function. A contradictory result pops out.
"Wow, I am not going to question the validity of my method and explore why it failed. I'll just assert that my method must be valid and so now 1+2+...=-1/12."
No real mathematician accepts this reasoning or result. It's meme trolls that perpetuate it.
Hunter Walker
Before Ramanujan, it was well understood that switching the order of terms in an infinite series changes the nature and properties of that series including potentially the convergence and limit of convergence. Consider:
1+1-1+1+1-1+... = diverges to infinity; let's just do a little creative term rearranging. Since I have and infinite number of 1's and -1's, let's write as follows 1-1+1-1+... now it oscillates between 1 and 0. So this series is bounded. Since they have different properties they clearly can't be equivalent or our definition of equality is blown up.
This is precisely why the concepts of sequences, infinite series, sequence of partial sums and limit of sequence of partial sums were developed and formalized.
>Ramanujan summation
Ignores all past formalization. It can generate reasonable results, but this is more an accident based on specific examples.
Bottom line, if the result looks too good to be true, it probably is false and you should explore why the failure occurred. If math is not consistent and reliable, it loses it's usefulness in real life.
Dylan Moore
but the -1/12 result is used in string theory
Cameron Walker
>but the -1/12 result is used in string theory
That is an argument against it, not for it.
Brandon Taylor
I hope this is b8/pasta
Caleb Watson
Wait I thought the whole -1/12 thing was a meme