What I Learned from Reading “Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant” by Julian Havil: Part 4

For $s > 1$ , Riemann’s famous zeta function is defined by

$\zeta(s) = \displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^s}$ .

This is also called a p-series in calculus.

What I didn’t know (Gamma, page 41) is that, in 1748, Leonhard Euler exactly computed this infinite series for $s = 26$ without a calculator! Here’s the answer:

$\displaystyle 1 + \frac{1}{2^{26}} + \frac{1}{3^{26}} + \frac{1}{4^{26}} + \dots = \frac{1,315,862 \pi^{26}}{11,094,481,976,030,578,125}$ .

I knew that Euler was an amazing human calculator, but I didn’t know he was that amazing.

When I researching for my series of posts on conditional convergence, especially examples related to the constant $\gamma$ , the reference Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant by Julian Havil kept popping up. Finally, I decided to splurge for the book, expecting a decent popular account of this number. After all, I’m a professional mathematician, and I took a graduate level class in analytic number theory. In short, I don’t expect to learn a whole lot when reading a popular science book other than perhaps some new pedagogical insights.

Boy, was I wrong. As I turned every page, it seemed I hit a new factoid that I had not known before.

In this series, I’d like to compile some of my favorites — while giving the book a very high recommendation.

What I Learned from Reading “Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant” by Julian Havil: Part 3

At the time of this writing, it is unknown if there are infinitely many twin primes, which are prime numbers that differ by 2 (like 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and 13, 17 and 19, etc.) However, significant progress has been made in recent years. However, it is known (Gamma, page 30) the sum of the reciprocals of the twin primes converges:

$\displaystyle \left( \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{5} \right) + \left( \frac{1}{5} + \frac{1}{7} \right) + \left( \frac{1}{11} + \frac{1}{13} \right) + \left( \frac{1}{17} + \frac{1}{19} \right) = 1.9021605824\dots$ .

This constant is known as Brun’s constant (see also Mathworld). In the process of computing this number, the infamous 1994 Pentium bug was found.

Although this sum is finite, it’s still unknown if there are infinitely many twin primes since it’s possible for an infinite sum to converge (like a geometric series).

Boy, was I wrong. As I turned every page, it seemed I hit a new factoid that I had not known before.

In this series, I’d like to compile some of my favorites — while giving the book a very high recommendation.

What I Learned from Reading “Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant” by Julian Havil: Part 2

Let’s define partial sums of the harmonic series as follows:

$H(m,n) = \displaystyle \frac{1}{m} + \frac{1}{m+1} + \frac{1}{m+2} + \dots + \frac{1}{n-1} + \frac{1}{n}$ ,

where $m < n$ are positive integers. Here are a couple of facts that I didn’t know before reading Gamma (pages 24-25):

$H(m,n)$ is never equal to an integer.
The only values of $n$ for which $H(1,n)$ is an integer are $n = 2$ and $n=6$ .

Boy, was I wrong. As I turned every page, it seemed I hit a new factoid that I had not known before.

In this series, I’d like to compile some of my favorites — while giving the book a very high recommendation.

What I Learned from Reading “Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant” by Julian Havil: Part 1

Boy, was I wrong. As I turned every page, it seemed I hit a new factoid that I had not known before.

In this series, I’d like to compile some of my favorites — while giving the book a very high recommendation.

It is well known the harmonic series diverges:

$\displaystyle 1 + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4} + \dots = \infty$ .

This means that, no matter what number $N$ you choose, I can find a number $n$ so that

$\displaystyle 1 + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4} + \dots + \frac{1}{n} > N$ .

What I didn’t know (p. 23 of Gamma) is that, in 1968, somebody actually figured out the precise number of terms that are needed for the sum on the left hand side to exceed 100. Here’s the answer:

15,092,688,622,113,788,323,693,563,264,538,101,449,859,497.

With one fewer term, the sum is a little less than 100.

Math Maps The Island of Utopia

Under the category of “Somebody Had To Figure It Out,” Dr. Andrew Simoson of King University (Bristol, Tennessee) used calculus to determine the shape of the island of Utopia in the 500-year-old book by Sir Thomas More based on the description of island given in the book’s introduction.

News article: https://www.insidescience.org/news/math-maps-island-thomas-mores-utopia

Paper by Dr. Simoson: http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2016/bridges2016-65.html

This Is Why There Are So Many Ties In Swimming

From the excellent article “This Is Why There Are So Many Ties In Swimming“, ties in swimming are allowed by the sport’s governing body because of the inevitability of roundoff error.

In 1972, Sweden’s Gunnar Larsson beat American Tim McKee in the 400m individual medley by 0.002 seconds. That finish led the governing body to eliminate timing by a significant digit. But why?

In a 50 meter Olympic pool, at the current men’s world record 50m pace, a thousandth-of-a-second constitutes 2.39 millimeters of travel. FINA pool dimension regulations allow a tolerance of 3 centimeters in each lane, more than ten times that amount. Could you time swimmers to a thousandth-of-a-second? Sure, but you couldn’t guarantee the winning swimmer didn’t have a thousandth-of-a-second-shorter course to swim. (Attempting to construct a concrete pool to any tighter a tolerance is nearly impossible; the effective length of a pool can change depending on the ambient temperature, the water temperature, and even whether or not there are people in the pool itself.)

Proportion in Grammar

Source: https://www.facebook.com/analyticalgrammar/photos/a.167941616890.130074.131324516890/10153609226726891/?type=3

Report Cards for Famous Mathematicians

From Math With Bad Drawings:

20151201070935_00008

Additionally, my favorites from the comments:

Evariste Galois gets an A+ in math and gets a D in behavior. Evariste is a very creative mathematician with potential for greatness. But he needs to get along better with others. Getting into fights is not the way to succeed.

Gödel is excellent at logic but his work is often incomplete.

I am missing Heisenberg’s report card here. “Werner refuses to give an exact answer and seems to be proud of his uncertainty.”

Benoit Mandelbrot C+, great at drawing designs but keeps going on and on and on about perimeters. Next time he should work on calculating areas as his answers were always zero…