Numberphile
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2014–2023
7:50 · 9.8M views · Jan 9, 2014
A Numberphile video in which physicists Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland show a seemingly astounding result that 1+2+3+4+... equals -1/12. The argument is informal and has drawn criticism for glossing over what the result actually means.
HN uses it as the standard reference for the -1/12 meme, with commenters split between enjoying it and calling it a cheat.
11 comments from Hacker News
this infinite sum was featured in a numberphile video a few days ago with a entraining and simple "proof": this video and a more advanced explanation & proof in the bonus-video: [LINK] you should definitely subscribe to numberphile ( [LINK] ) and their sister channel computerphile ( [LINK] ) on youtube :)
This is a good video explaining it: this video Although it relies on a particular interpretation of the left side of the equation, it's used in some areas of physics.
Watch this entertaining Numberphile video about this topic: this video Apparently it's used in many areas in Physics.
Few days back I stumbled upon a video about Ramanujan [0] and the: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ..(to infinity) = -1/12.(Turns out the proof in the video is incorrect or at least not concise enough, because you can't do that with divergent series). So that got me curious and I wanted to understand what's going on. How can 1 + 2 .. etc equal to -1/12 and not infinity. So I went on small binge watching videos to get an intuition and understanding about this. This led me to Riemann Hypothesis and Euler's identities and complex numbers etc. Now I have a list of books that I want to skim/read to get a historical context around these problems. I don't take any notes just yet, because I don't know what is important and what is not, I just jump into the stuff and hope that when I come out of the other end I will at least have a understanding why it equals -1/12. It's like panning out gold, there might be some gold nuggets. And maybe, just by pure chance, I come up with some ridiculous ideas how to disprove Riemann Hypothesis ;P (I think I have to revisit Gödel, Escher, Bach and Gödel's Incompletness Theorems to prove that it's not provable). - [0] this video EDIT: Sorry to all facepalming mathematicians who happen to read this comment.
I think the quality of numberphile videos vary quite considerably. The one you linked is a rather honest explanation of the idea of comparing the size of sets through bijections and a good explanation of Cantors diagonal argument. As a mathematician I'm quite fine with it. The one linked in the submission is more of an obvious statement hidden by obscure use of language. Slightly silly, but not very bad. The worst offender with "magic" is the one with the Riemann zeta function [1], which went viral a while ago. The problem here is that they get people started off on the wrong foot, confusing them with wrong arguments and hidden definitions. Now, if people really want to understand why this can be made meaningful, you first have to explain that the better portion of the video is absolutely wrong, and only then can you explain what is actually going on. [1] this video