1 Mar
2014
1 Mar
'14
6:33 a.m.
On Feb 28, 2014, at 5:29 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
The website looks very nice — at first glance. But I don’t think MSRI would intentionally support a video that claims 1+2+3+ . . . = -1/12, since the research institute seems mainly interested in mathematical truth.
This series comes up in the Casimir effect. In class, before I try to make sense of it, I remind my students of the story, where Gauss's 3rd grade teacher asks the class to sum 1+2+ … +100. Okay, they all know that one. What is less well known, I then go on, is that Riemann's 3rd grade teacher, not to be outdone, had the class sum 1+2+ … -Veit