This is funny, and probably BS but who knows? It claims:
He is proving an interesting result using “wrong BS maths”:
Zeta(x) → -1/12 when x → -1
Here is the proof using “proper maths” by Terence Tao (Fields Medal who did Math Olympiad and University at 10 years old, aka he is not YouTube influencer, he is viewed as the greatest living math guy)
There is 1 million dollar prize to anyone who can solve Zeta function
Where do you get x = -1 from? The sum is for n=1 and above. No negative numbers. Otherwise the whole thing is BS.
Peter wrote:
This is funny, and probably BS but who knows? It claims:
It’s all a matter of definition. With the usual definition of infinite sums the sum of n from 0 to infinity is not definied – it does not have a value. You can extend the definition of infinite sums in a way that give values to diverging sums. These definitions make sense mathematically in some situations.
Mathematics is all about definitions. Lots of things are defined in a way that make sense in “reality”, but there are also lots of things that don’t have any relation with reality but still make sense from a mathematical point of view.
A very simple example is that commonly multiplication of no numbers is defined to be one. Obviously multiplication must involve at least two numbers, but having that definition simplifies some mathematical laws.
But surely this is playing with words i.e. BS. If you live in the physical world, there is no way that adding up positive numbers can produce a negative sum!
Peter wrote:
This is funny, and probably BS but who knows?
Question on how you define Infinitesimal Calculus with respect to Infinite numbers. Not true for physical values, of course.
Reminded me of this same bullshit quality calculation.
So second-last line reads as girls are “the root of (all) evil”.
Not true for physical values
I am told that one can define an alternate geometry which proves the earth is flat.
It’s useful because 1) it can be fun to reason about non-physical things and 2) it can help discover many things that are not part of current models or methods but eventually make their way back to physical reality thanks to this imaginary experiments.
Another example of this is the wave function phase in QM. The phase is purely non-physical but the calculations on it make it so that a lot of physical things line up well in the end. It’s not the case for -1/12, but it could potentially be after further exploration, and it could give similar but different ideas that have real usefulness.
I think the video did a good enough job explaining these reserves (by not pretending having broken math or reality).
Lot of stuff in maths is not real, for instance the square of two real numbers is always positive, yet we have imaginary numbers in maths
It does not make them useless, one is likely to see more imaginary numbers in engineering than in theoretical maths? In electrical engineering, they use “j” instead of “i” for root-square of -1, I was told as “i” is reserved for electrical current
Complex numbers are just a tool in engineering. Nobody pretends they are real.