Category: Mathematics
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1+2+3+… = -1/12 !? Or… “Why infinity does not exist!”
Srinivasa Ramanujan presented two derivations of “1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … = −1/12” in chapter 8 of his first notebook. The simpler, less rigorous derivation proceeds in two steps, as follows. The first key insight is that the series of positive numbers 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ·…
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Maths, genes, anxiety, silence.
A new study of math anxiety shows how some people may be at greater risk to fear math not only because of negative experiences, but also because of genetic risks related to both general anxiety and math skills. The results don’t mean that math anxiety can be blamed solely or even mostly on genetic factors,…
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Mathematics, Babel, 数学!
A Kazakh mathematician’s claim to have solved a problem worth a million dollars is proving hard to evaluate – in part because it is not written in English. (1) Mukhtarbay Otelbayev of the Eurasian National University in Astana, Kazakhstan, says he has proved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, which concerns equations that are used to…
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Leibnitz, Polynesia, potatoes.
Polynesian islanders spoke the language of computers centuries before the first programmer was born. It seems that inhabitants of Mangareva island in French Polynesia created their own particular hybrid of decimal and binary number systems to do mental arithmetic. (1) Binary or decimal, one thing is for sure. We have the need to measure. We…
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(-1) times (-1) does not equal 1?
Why a negative times a negative should be a positive? (1) Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Take a look at the following string of equations: –1 × 3 = –3 –1 × 2 = –2 –1 × 1 = –1 –1 × 0 = 0 –1 × –1 = ? Now look…
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