The Riemann zeta function is defined in the region
by the absolutely convergent series
Thus, for instance, it is known that , and thus
For , the series on the right-hand side of (1) is no longer absolutely convergent, or even conditionally convergent. Nevertheless, the
function can be extended to this region (with a pole at
) by analytic continuation. For instance, it can be shown that after analytic continuation, one has
,
, and
, and more generally
for , where
are the Bernoulli numbers. If one formally applies (1) at these values of
, one obtains the somewhat bizarre formulae
Clearly, these formulae do not make sense if one stays within the traditional way to evaluate infinite series, and so it seems that one is forced to use the somewhat unintuitive analytic continuation interpretation of such sums to make these formulae rigorous. But as it stands, the formulae look “wrong” for several reasons. Most obviously, the summands on the left are all positive, but the right-hand sides can be zero or negative. A little more subtly, the identities do not appear to be consistent with each other. For instance, if one adds (4) to (5), one obtains
whereas if one subtracts from (5) one obtains instead
and the two equations seem inconsistent with each other.
However, it is possible to interpret (4), (5), (6) by purely real-variable methods, without recourse to complex analysis methods such as analytic continuation, thus giving an “elementary” interpretation of these sums that only requires undergraduate calculus; we will later also explain how this interpretation deals with the apparent inconsistencies pointed out above.
To see this, let us first consider a convergent sum such as (2). The classical interpretation of this formula is the assertion that the partial sums
converge to as
, or in other words that
where denotes a quantity that goes to zero as
. Actually, by using the integral test estimate
we have the sharper result
Thus we can view as the leading coefficient of the asymptotic expansion of the partial sums of
.
One can then try to inspect the partial sums of the expressions in (4), (5), (6), but the coefficients bear no obvious relationship to the right-hand sides:
For (7), the classical Faulhaber formula (or Bernoulli formula) gives
for , which has a vague resemblance to (7), but again the connection is not particularly clear.
The problem here is the discrete nature of the partial sum
which (if is viewed as a real number) has jump discontinuities at each positive integer value of
. These discontinuities yield various artefacts when trying to approximate this sum by a polynomial in
. (These artefacts also occur in (2), but happen in that case to be obscured in the error term
; but for the divergent sums (4), (5), (6), (7), they are large enough to cause real trouble.)
However, these issues can be resolved by replacing the abruptly truncated partial sums with smoothed sums
, where
is a cutoff function, or more precisely a compactly supported bounded function that equals
at
. The case when
is the indicator function
then corresponds to the traditional partial sums, with all the attendant discretisation artefacts; but if one chooses a smoother cutoff, then these artefacts begin to disappear (or at least become lower order), and the true asymptotic expansion becomes more manifest.
Note that smoothing does not affect the asymptotic value of sums that were already absolutely convergent, thanks to the dominated convergence theorem. For instance, we have
whenever is a cutoff function (since
pointwise as
and is uniformly bounded). If
is equal to
on a neighbourhood of the origin, then the integral test argument then recovers the
decay rate:
However, smoothing can greatly improve the convergence properties of a divergent sum. The simplest example is Grandi’s series
The partial sums
oscillate between and
, and so this series is not conditionally convergent (and certainly not absolutely convergent). However, if one performs analytic continuation on the series
and sets , one obtains a formal value of
for this series. This value can also be obtained by smooth summation. Indeed, for any cutoff function
, we can regroup
If is twice continuously differentiable (i.e.
), then from Taylor expansion we see that the summand has size
, and also (from the compact support of
) is only non-zero when
. This leads to the asymptotic
and so we recover the value of as the leading term of the asymptotic expansion.
Exercise 1 Show that if
is merely once continuously differentiable (i.e.
), then we have a similar asymptotic, but with an error term of
instead of
. This is an instance of a more general principle that smoother cutoffs lead to better error terms, though the improvement sometimes stops after some degree of regularity.
Remark 2 The most famous instance of smoothed summation is Cesáro summation, which corresponds to the cutoff function
. Unsurprisingly, when Cesáro summation is applied to Grandi’s series, one again recovers the value of
.
If we now revisit the divergent series (4), (5), (6), (7) with smooth summation in mind, we finally begin to see the origin of the right-hand sides. Indeed, for any fixed smooth cutoff function , we will shortly show that
for any fixed where
is the Archimedean factor
(which is also essentially the Mellin transform of ). Thus we see that the values (4), (5), (6), (7) obtained by analytic continuation are nothing more than the constant terms of the asymptotic expansion of the smoothed partial sums. This is not a coincidence; we will explain the equivalence of these two interpretations of such sums (in the model case when the analytic continuation has only finitely many poles and does not grow too fast at infinity) below the fold.
This interpretation clears up the apparent inconsistencies alluded to earlier. For instance, the sum consists only of non-negative terms, as does its smoothed partial sums
(if
is non-negative). Comparing this with (12), we see that this forces the highest-order term
to be non-negative (as indeed it is), but does not prohibit the lower-order constant term
from being negative (which of course it is).
Similarly, if we add together (12) and (11) we obtain
while if we subtract from (12) we obtain
These two asymptotics are not inconsistent with each other; indeed, if we shift the index of summation in (17), we can write
and so we now see that the discrepancy between the two sums in (8), (9) come from the shifting of the cutoff , which is invisible in the formal expressions in (8), (9) but become manifestly present in the smoothed sum formulation.
Exercise 3 By Taylor expanding
and using (11), (18) show that (16) and (17) are indeed consistent with each other, and in particular one can deduce the latter from the former.
— 1. Smoothed asymptotics —
We now prove (11), (12), (13), (14). We will prove the first few asymptotics by ad hoc methods, but then switch to the systematic method of the Euler-Maclaurin formula to establish the general case.
For sake of argument we shall assume that the smooth cutoff is supported in the interval
(the general case is similar, and can also be deduced from this case by redefining the
parameter). Thus the sum
is now only non-trivial in the range
.
To establish (11), we shall exploit the trapezoidal rule. For any smooth function , and on an interval
, we see from Taylor expansion that
for any ,
. In particular we have
and
eliminating , we conclude that
Summing in , we conclude the trapezoidal rule
We apply this with , which has a
norm of
from the chain rule, and conclude that
But from (15) and a change of variables, the left-hand side is just . This gives (11).
The same argument does not quite work with (12); one would like to now set , but the
norm is now too large (
instead of
). To get around this we have to refine the trapezoidal rule by performing the more precise Taylor expansion
where . Now we have
and
We cannot simultaneously eliminate both and
. However, using the additional Taylor expansion
one obtains
and thus on summing in , and assuming that
vanishes to second order at
, one has (by telescoping series)
We apply this with . After a few applications of the chain rule and product rule, we see that
; also,
,
, and
. This gives (12).
The proof of (13) is similar. With a fourth order Taylor expansion, the above arguments give
and
Here we have a minor miracle (equivalent to the vanishing of the third Bernoulli number ) that the
term is automatically eliminated when we eliminate the
term, yielding
and thus
With , the left-hand side is
, the first two terms on the right-hand side vanish, and the
norm is
, giving (13).
Now we do the general case (14). We define the Bernoulli numbers recursively by the formula
for all , or equivalently
The first few values of can then be computed:
From (19) we see that
for any polynomial (with
being the
-fold derivative of
); indeed, (19) is precisely this identity with
, and the general case then follows by linearity.
As (20) holds for all polynomials, it also holds for all formal power series (if we ignore convergence issues). If we then replace by the formal power series
we conclude the formal power series (in ) identity
leading to the familiar generating function
for the Bernoulli numbers.
If we apply (20) with equal to the antiderivative of another polynomial
, we conclude that
which we rearrange as the identity
which can be viewed as a precise version of the trapezoidal rule in the polynomial case. Note that if has degree
, the only the summands with
can be non-vanishing.
Now let be a smooth function. We have a Taylor expansion
for and some polynomial
of degree at most
; also
for and
. We conclude that
Translating this by an arbitrary integer (which does not affect the
norm), we obtain
Summing the telescoping series, and assuming that vanishes to a sufficiently high order at
, we conclude the Euler-Maclaurin formula
We apply this with . The left-hand side is
. All the terms in the sum vanish except for the
term, which is
. Finally, from many applications of the product rule and chain rule (or by viewing
where
is the smooth function
) we see that
, and the claim (14) follows.
Remark 4 By using a higher regularity norm than the
norm, we see that the error term
can in fact be improved to
for any fixed
, if
is sufficiently smooth.
Exercise 5 Use (21) to derive Faulhaber’s formula (10). Note how the presence of boundary terms at
cause the right-hand side of (10) to be quite different from the right-hand side of (14); thus we see how non-smooth partial summation creates artefacts that can completely obscure the smoothed asymptotics.
— 2. Connection with analytic continuation —
Now we connect the interpretation of divergent series as the constant term of smoothed partial sum asymptotics, with the more traditional interpretation via analytic continuation. For sake of concreteness we shall just discuss the situation with the Riemann zeta function series , though the connection extends to far more general series than just this one.
In the previous section, we have computed asymptotics for the partial sums
when is a negative integer. A key point (which was somewhat glossed over in the above analysis) was that the function
was smooth, even at the origin; this was implicitly used to bound various
norms in the error terms.
Now suppose that is a complex number with
, which is not necessarily a negative integer. Then
becomes singular at the origin, and the above asymptotic analysis is not directly applicable. However, if one instead considers the telescoped partial sum
with equal to
near the origin, then by applying (22) to the function
(which vanishes near the origin, and is now smooth everywhere), we soon obtain the asymptotic
Applying this with equal to a power of two and summing the telescoping series, one concludes that
for some complex number which is basically the sum of the various
terms appearing in (23). By modifying the above arguments, it is not difficult to extend this asymptotic to other numbers than powers of two, and to show that
is independent of the choice of cutoff
.
From (24) we have
which can be viewed as a definition of in the region
. For instance, from (14), we have now proven (3) with this definition of
. However it is difficult to compute
exactly for most other values of
.
For each fixed , it is not hard to see that the expression
is complex analytic in
. Also, by a closer inspection of the error terms in the Euler-Maclaurin formula analysis, it is not difficult to show that for
in any compact region of
, these expressions converge uniformly as
. Applying Morera’s theorem, we conclude that our definition of
is complex analytic in the region
.
We still have to connect this definition with the traditional definition (1) of the zeta function on the other half of the complex plane. To do this, we observe that
for large enough. Thus we have
for . The point of doing this is that this definition also makes sense in the region
(due to the absolute convergence of the sum
and integral
. By using the trapezoidal rule, one also sees that this definition makes sense in the region
, with locally uniform convergence there also. So we in fact have a globally complex analytic definition of
, and thus a meromorphic definition of
on the complex plane. Note also that this definition gives the asymptotic
near , where
is Euler’s constant.
We have thus seen that asymptotics on smoothed partial sums of gives rise to the familiar meromorphic properties of the Riemann zeta function
. It turns out that by combining the tools of Fourier analysis and complex analysis, one can reverse this procedure and deduce the asymptotics of
from the meromorphic properties of the zeta function.
Let’s see how. Fix a complex number with
, and a smooth cutoff function
which equals one near the origin, and consider the expression
where is a large number. We let
be a large number, and rewrite this as
where
The function is in the Schwartz class. By the Fourier inversion formula, it has a Fourier representation
where
and so (26) can be rewritten as
The function is also Schwartz. If
is large enough, we may then interchange the integral and sum and use (1) to rewrite (26) as
Now we have
integrating by parts (which is justified when is large enough) we have
where
We can thus write (26) as a contour integral
Note that is compactly supported away from zero, which makes
an entire function of
, which is uniformly bounded whenever
is bounded. Furthermore, from repeated integration by parts we see that
is rapidly decreasing as
, uniformly for
in a compact set. Meanwhile, standard estimates show that
is of polynomial growth in
for
in a compact set. Finally, the meromorphic function
has a simple pole at
(with residue
) and at
(with residue
). Applying the residue theorem, we can write (26) as
for any . Using the various bounds on
and
, we see that the integral is
. From integration by parts we have
and
and thus we have
for any , which is (14) (with the refined error term indicated in Remark 4).
The above argument reveals that the simple pole of at
is directly connected to the
term in the asymptotics of the smoothed partial sums. More generally, if a Dirichlet series
has a meromorphic continuation to the entire complex plane, and does not grow too fast at infinity, then one (heuristically at least) has the asymptotic
where ranges over the poles of
, and
are the residues at those poles. For instance, one has the famous explicit formula
where is the von Mangoldt function,
are the non-trivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function (counting multiplicity, if any), and
is an error term (basically arising from the trivial zeroes of zeta); this ultimately reflects the fact that the Dirichlet series
has a simple pole at (with residue
) and simple poles at every zero of the zeta function with residue
(weighted again by multiplicity, though it is not believed that multiple zeroes actually exist).
The link between poles of the zeta function (and its relatives) and asymptotics of (smoothed) partial sums of arithmetical functions can be used to compare elementary methods in analytic number theory with complex methods. Roughly speaking, elementary methods are based on leading term asymptotics of partial sums of arithmetical functions, and are mostly based on exploiting the simple pole of at
(and the lack of a simple zero of Dirichlet
-functions at
); in contrast, complex methods also take full advantage of the zeroes of
and Dirichlet
-functions (or the lack thereof) in the entire complex plane, as well as the functional equation (which, in terms of smoothed partial sums, manifests itself through the Poisson summation formula). Indeed, using the above correspondences it is not hard to see that the prime number theorem (for instance) is equivalent to the lack of zeroes of the Riemann zeta function on the line
.
With this dictionary between elementary methods and complex methods, the Dirichlet hyperbola method in elementary analytic number theory corresponds to analysing the behaviour of poles and residues when multiplying together two Dirichlet series. For instance, by using the formula (11) and the hyperbola method, together with the asymptotic
which can be obtained from the trapezoidal rule and the definition of , one can obtain the asymptotic
where is the divisor function (and in fact one can improve the
bound substantially by being more careful); this corresponds to the fact that the Dirichlet series
has a double pole at with expansion
and no other poles, which of course follows by multiplying (25) with itself.
Remark 6 In the literature, elementary methods in analytic number theorem often use sharply truncated sums rather than smoothed sums. However, as indicated earlier, the error terms tend to be slightly better when working with smoothed sums (although not much gain is obtained in this manner when dealing with sums of functions that are sensitive to the primes, such as
, as the terms arising from the zeroes of the zeta function tend to dominate any saving in this regard).
195 comments
Comments feed for this article
10 April, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Allen Knutson
Do you understand how Planck’s black-body radiation formula “should” be related to Euler-Maclaurin? I don’t think I’m even asking the question correctly, but confident you can deal with that part.
10 April, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Terence Tao
Ah, I remember discussing these sorts of questions back in grad school :-)
Well, ostensibly most visible connection between the two is that the expression
appears in both. OK, let’s try deconstructing this, starting with Euler-Maclaurin. One way to formally derive it (which I didn’t emphasise above, as I wanted to keep things fairly elementary, and also rigorous) is to start with the Taylor expansion, which one can write as
where
is the derivative operator. In particular
Using the power series expansion
mentioned in the post and using Taylor expansion and the fundamental theorem of calculus (to invert
) one can then quickly obtain a formal derivation of the Euler-Maclaurin formula.
Now for black-body radiation. The key calculation here involves the expected particle number of a boson gas at frequency
. Ignoring vacuum energy issues, a n-particle state here should have energy
. At temperature
, the proportion of the state with particle number n is thus something like
, where
is the partition function at this frequency (ignoring state multiplicity arising from spin). Summing the geometric-like series, we see that the expected particle number
is then something like
, which then appears in the black-body radiation law. (In three dimensions, one then gets two extra powers of
coming from polar coordinates as
ranges over
or a discretised version thereof.)
In one dimension, the frequency
is associated to the operator
(this is just reflecting the relationship
). So the energy is associated to
(this reflects the relation
) and so the partition function formally resembles something like
. So I guess this is a sort of Wick rotation of the summation
that appears in Euler-Maclaurin. The expected particle number
can be viewed as a variant of the partition function. I guess if one is working in the low frequency regime then one can then Taylor expand in D and see a series with Bernoulli number coefficients appear.
To summarise: the low-frequency expansion of the black body radiation formula can be derived from a variant of a higher-dimensional Wick-rotated version of Euler-Maclaurin. It’s sort of a six-degrees-of-separation thing, but I guess there is some slight connection.
31 January, 2021 at 5:30 pm
Tom Copeland
(Belatedly) The Wikipedia article Polylogarithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylogarith) shows several relationships among the polylogarithms, the Bernoulli numbers, Riemann and Hurwitz zeta functions, and the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein distributions. In https://oeis.org/A131758, I pointed out relations among several special number sequences and associated polynomials, their interpolations, the deformed Todd operator, and the FD and BE distributions. Taking the Mellin transform of the distributions gives the polylogarithm over two different domains. Hyper (cluster) polylogarithms have also popped up in recent papers on scattering amplitudes.
10 April, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Anonymous
Should there be an expository tag? [Added, thanks – T.]
11 April, 2010 at 12:04 am
Américo Tavares
Small typo between (2) and (3)
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
13 April, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Bryan Jacobs
typo is back!
[Corrected (again), thanks. – T.]
12 April, 2010 at 6:31 am
Mark Meckes
Typo: after “integral test estimate” the first integral sign should be a summation.
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
12 April, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Jamal
YOU ARE GREAT! How can I learn mathematics by hard byhard
13 April, 2010 at 12:17 am
Bo Jacoby
Thanks!
Shouldn’t formula (8)



read
to avoid confusion with
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
The expression


should be understood as
Otherwise the expression depend on N.
Likewise the upper summation limit in formulas 11-12-13-14-16-17-18 should be N rather than \infty.
The formula
\displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^\infty (-1)^{n-1} \eta(n/N) = \frac{1}{2} + \sum_{m=1}^\infty \frac{\eta((2m-1)/N) – 2\eta(2m/N) + \eta((2m+1)/N)}{2}.
must be split into two lines in order to display correctly.
13 April, 2010 at 12:43 am
Bo Jacoby
I regret my second comment above. Now I got it.
15 April, 2010 at 11:14 am
Javier
Pf. Tao,
I hope you do not shoot messengers bearing bad news!
I noticed equation 19 is incorrect. The series in equation (19) is equal to zero (I find it incredible no one has made a comment about this). Therefore, the recursion formula you suggest is incorrect. (I tested the recursion for the first few Bernoulli numbers, and I also checked in wolfram website in http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BernoulliNumber.html eq. #34). Therefore, the basis of your development in this blog seems suspect to me since equation 20 has no basis for polynomials unless you replace the first derivative evaluated at one to evaluation at zero for P(x;s) = x^s. It seem interesting to me that yet equation 20 is valid for P(x;t) = exp(xt). I think this has to do with the fact that P(0;t) is identical to one.
Sincerely,
Javier
15 April, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Terence Tao
Dear Javier,
I believe you are using the alternate definition of the Bernoulli numbers, in which
is set to -1/2 rather than 1/2. There does not appear to be a consensus on which one is the canonical definition; both definitions have their own (minor) advantages. For instance, with the
convention, the formula (7) can be extended to the case s=0.
31 January, 2021 at 4:11 pm
Tom Copeland
Looking at the Bernoulli polynomials rather than just the #s seems to collate formulas. Ramanujan’s Master Formula gives the Hurwitz zeta function as essentially an entire function interpolation of the Bernoulli polynomials
with e.g.f.
, for which the moments are the Bernoulli numbers with e.g.f.
with
. This e.g.f. reflects the Bernoulli polynomials’ umbral derivational property
, which extends formally term by term to any Taylor series as
. Defining
destroys this derivational property and redefines all higher degree Bernoulli polynomials. Rather,
, and this is the consistent with the RMT/Mellin interpolation of the Bernoulli polynomials to the Hurwitz zeta function
, giving
. In the integrand of the MT interpolator,
is the correct expression, which differs only in the term linear in
from
, i.e.,
with all odd index values vanishing but for
. Confer https://mathoverflow.net/questions/353282/an-analytic-continuation-of-power-series-coefficients/379477#379477. Reprising, the Riemann zeta function can be regarded as the Mellin interpolation of the sequence
. Summation formulas with the ‘Todd’ operator retain a nice form as well (cf. https://mathoverflow.net/questions/380142/intuitive-explanation-why-shadow-operator-frac-ded-1-connects-logarithms/380189#380189).
31 January, 2021 at 4:16 pm
Tom Copeland
Cut and paste error: In my derivative formula, obviously one
should be
.
15 April, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Javier
Dear Pf. Tao,
I must admit do not have a math degree, but I love mathematics because of it’s beauty. I am a test engineer by trade and therefore like to test the mathematical ideas I read. I thought B_1 = -1/2 was the “original” Bernoulli number ;-) Do you have a reference for the “extra crispy” definition of the Bernoulli, B_1 = 1/2?
I think I understand your article’s motivation: you are trying to create meaning to non-convergent series by applying a smoothing function to give a reasonable values to functions with integral representations (which can be analytically continued in the complex domain), thereby using the “asymptotic series” as a quick way to calculate values of these functions, such as the Riemann Zeta function (RZ). Is this correct? If this is the case, could this “approximation” method give an advantage in calculating the zeros of RZ ? I do not know, but my intuition tells me no.
Again thanks for the clarification and not shooting the messenger :-)
Javier
8 August, 2018 at 3:38 am
Anto.Mudhoka
moral:never argue with a fields medalist.hahaha
28 May, 2010 at 10:00 am
Divergent sums and the class number formula « Secret Blogging Seminar
[…] why Orde’s argument works. Specifically, I am going to use an idea which I learned from Terry Tao’s blog: Arguments about divergent sums are often really arguments about the constant term in asymptotic […]
29 May, 2010 at 12:03 am
Jeremy Williams
Before learning of Bernoulli Numbers, I myself have derived a closed formula for the summation of consecutive integers raised to the i power. Within this fomula I derived another closed formula for computing Bernoulli Numbers.
After this, I derived a much more efficient formula for generating the summation of consecutive integers riased to the i power. If you are interest in looking at my work (in pdf format) please reply to this post, and I will email it to you.
2 September, 2018 at 11:28 pm
ketilo
Actually, *I* would be very interested. If you would be so kind, email me at cherry@cherrytree.at please. I’m currently trying to get many different angles on this topic because I believe there to be a deeper hidden truth beyond what we understood by now. (But I’m far from understanding enough of it to advance in that direction)
16 November, 2019 at 5:24 pm
Praveen
Jeremy, it’s a long time since you posted that comment. I wonder if you have uploaded your PDF to one of the archive servers. If so, please post a link.
29 May, 2010 at 12:05 am
Jeremy Williams
by the way, all of my computations and derivations give B(1) = +1/2
18 August, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Dan Christensen
In the discussion of Grandi’s series, in the displayed equation after
“Indeed, for any cutoff function
, we can regroup”
shouldn’t the leading term
actually be
?
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
3 September, 2010 at 2:29 pm
tereta
I found my question,thanks”
19 September, 2010 at 4:54 am
Max Atkin
Dear Prof. Tao,
I found this article a very interesting and fun read. I was wondering if there exists a more precise statement of the following (which appears just before you mention the “explicit formula” );
“More generally, if a Dirichlet series
has a meromorphic continuation to the entire complex plane, and does not grow too fast at infinity, then one (heuristically at least) has the asymptotic
where
ranges over the poles of
, and
are the residues at those poles.”
In particular, I would be interested to know what qualifications are hiding in “heuristically at least” and “does not grow too fast at infinity” – is there a theorem that states this somewhere?
Thanks,
Max
19 September, 2010 at 8:17 am
Terence Tao
Well, I do not know of a precise reference, but most texts in analytic number theory would have some results along these lines, perhaps specialised to specific Dirichlet series such as the one for 1/zeta(s) or zeta'(s)/zeta(s). But the basic idea is simply to mimic the discussion given previously for the
case to whatever Dirichlet series one is studying.
21 September, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Max Atkin
Thank you for taking the time to reply. It sounds as if this is something that is approached on a case by case basis rather than proving a set of properties that a_n must satisfy in order for an “explicit formula” to exist. Is this because the latter approach is too hard?
21 September, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Terence Tao
It’s more an issue of non-uniqueness. There are many different choices for what hypotheses to place here, and various conclusions one could reach (involving different hypotheses on the cutoff
, different bounds on the error term, etc.). [This is common to many principles in analysis; they are not easily formalised by a “one-size-fits-all” theorem, in contrast to the more algebraic portions of mathematics, but instead need to be tailored to each separate application.]
Also, in most number-theoretic applications, the Dirichlet series in question obeys a functional equation, which can be used to strengthen the asymptotic to a significantly greater extent than can be done for a generic Dirichlet series. So it isn’t all that worthwhile to write down a specific instantiation of the heuristic formula until it is actually needed, other than as a useful exercise to test if one understands how such formulae would be derived.
6 October, 2010 at 8:49 am
Yet Another Article to Read During Break | What's Up
[…] From Terry Tao’s blog. […]
23 July, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Erdos’ divisor bound « What’s new
[…] sharper bounds available by using tools such as the Euler-Maclaurin formula (see this blog post). Exponentiating such asymptotics, incidentally, leads to one of the standard proofs of […]
28 March, 2012 at 8:01 pm
march
Dr.Tao ,at s=0 the value should be -1/2 if i’m not mistaking ,anyway my question is this the only way this value obtainable ?
30 March, 2012 at 9:20 pm
march
I got it,the series is 1/2 but the value of zeta at s=0 is -1/2
4 June, 2012 at 10:36 am
What happens when a physicist does math :) | Room 196, Hilbert's Hotel
[…] good reference to that is here. Wanna share?TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmailPrintLike this:LikeOne blogger likes this […]
24 April, 2013 at 1:18 am
jose garcia
thanks for your lesson Professor Tao :)
my question is instead of smoothed sums could we use regulators ? for exapmle for the series {1+2+3+4+5+6+7+….} we introduce a parameter or regulator ‘s’ so { \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}n^{1-s}} so for big ‘s’ the sum conveges ?
30 June, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Anonymous
ZETA REGULARIZATION can also be extended to inlcude the renormalizatio of integrals http://vixra.org/pdf/1305.0171v2.pdf however no one pays me attention since i am not famous..
26 October, 2013 at 5:55 am
Jose Javier Garcia Moreta
it should be worth mentioning that ZETA REGULARIZATION can be also be applied to divergent integrals in Quantum Field theory and not only for divergent series look http://vixra.org/abs/1305.0171
21 January, 2014 at 12:04 pm
MrCactu5 (@MonsieurCactus)
it is been my experience information travels faster by word of mouth than first-hand experience.
a discussion of zeta-regularization – stripped of any physics – can be found on math.StackExchange:
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/39802/why-does-123-dots-1-over-12
I personally have doubts… you can pick any collection of weights and have them approach 1 and take the constant term. Standard procedure in QFT.
Nonetheless, -1/12 seems to be agreed as the value of the sum of the positive integers.
I like Dr. Tao’s explanation which uses numerical analysis rather than complex analysis, which feels contrived here. And he points out some holds I hadn’t observed before.
18 January, 2014 at 8:40 pm
Rahul Raj
Don’t underestimate the Zeros!
This has a mix of Good Maths and Bad Maths which muddles the mind of the less-than-mathematically-inclined, including yours truly. However, the equations [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] and [9] (at least) make the same bad deductions as the numberphile video. You can see the fallacy here http://rahulraj-says.blogspot.in/2014/01/the-power-of-zero.html.
If the car runs at a constant speed for an hour, it *seriously* impacts the averages, and it does not actually start running 4 times faster if it does a 4x speed only the other hour.
19 January, 2014 at 10:45 pm
Anonymous
But you did not take your example to infinity. When you do the result can be negative. This is a well observed occurrence in several branches of physics starting with thermodynamics through string theory. It has even been experimentally demonstrated (in atomic physics). It is certainly unintuitive that summing positive numbers could result in a negative value, but the piece missing is that infinity is not intuitive — any introductory course on number theory or complex analysis will inform you of this. I recommend you do a bit more exploratory learning rather than claiming fallacies where they do not exist. The mathematics here is sound: Professor Tao even demonstrated several different methods at arriving with the same conclusion.
20 January, 2014 at 9:42 am
jj
only because it’s not intuitive doesn’t mean a nonsense result isn’t a nonsense result. “the result isn’t intuitive, but infinity isn’t, so this must be correct then” is no valid method of proof.
the classical sum over the natural numbers doesn’t exist (nor is it negative).
and terence tao says that in this very blog post, look above. and the wikipedia page on it says it right in the beginning. but many people tend to ignore that. because it’d be cooler to sum infinitely many positive numbers to get a negative number. that’s more psychology than mathematics.
what is being done here is not calculating the classical sum of those divergent series by “some new method”, but a method of assigning a value to a divergent sum, which isn’t really free of inconsistencies.
we need to be careful and not mix up the theory of sequences and infinite sums with what might be called ramanujan summation.
similarly we shouldn’t mix up the (cauchy) principal value of some divergent integral with the proper integral. for example
int 1/x over [-1,1] doesn’t exist, but the cauchy principal value would be 1. they are 2 different things, and a thing like the principal value exists, because it’s useful, but it’s not necessarily the “better concept”.
15 October, 2017 at 11:57 am
Ángel Méndez Rivera
I don’t think you actually read the blog post. Terence Tao CLEARLY stated that these inconsistencies are apparent and can be resolved by using smooth function which replace the discrete functions. This is correct, because using a function which is only defined for natural numbers and then evaluating the limit to infinity is not appropriate, because there are infinitely many functions which can satisfy those outputs from the partial sumvalues at natural inputs, so it is not sufficient to determine information about bounded behavior. Plus, it assumes that infinity behaves like an integer number, even though we can prove it does not.
What Terence Tao provided in this blog post is a numerical, functional analysis of partial sums by utilizing expressions which are differentiable, continuous, and valid for all complex numbers, and then evaluating the limit to infinity. Therefore, this is all consistent with the definition of convergent sums and the definition of a series. In fact, declaring these sums are divergent is itself misnomer and inaccurate.
Also, Tao did not actually say the sums do not exist, he said the sums appear nonsensical from a traditional point of view, nonsensical coming to mean unintuitive and inexplicable or unjustifiable.
Yes, Wikipedia does say the sum does not exist classically. No one cares about what Wikipedia says, it is not a scholarly source.
Lastly, but not least, you complete ignored all of the mathematics Tao presented here in the blog, which do not rely on Ramanujan summation.
28 January, 2019 at 3:48 am
Anon
>No one cares about what Wikipedia says, it is not a scholarly source.
By a natural extension of your statement, since this is a blog and not a scholarly source, no one needs to care about what you or Dr. Tao said.
29 January, 2019 at 1:07 pm
Ángel
Dr. Terrence Tao is a scholarly source. Mathematicians who do or have done on the research on the subject and have written on it are by default scholarly sources. You are correct that the blog itself does not mean anything as a source, but that is completely irrekevant, ultimately. That is the difference between Wikipedia and this blog. Now how about you stop trying i be a smartass and try providing a valid counterargument? That would be appreciated very much. I don’t expect one, though, because it is difficult to come up for a counterargument against facts and mathematical truths.
18 March, 2018 at 11:45 pm
Angel Mendez Rivera
You have absolutely no respect. Terrence Tao has been studying mathematics for nearly half a century, and he is one of the most respected mathematicians of our time, calling him less-than-mathematically inclined is truly an insult and it does not show anything about the mathematical theory he offers here. This man has probably contributed more to the field than you will ever be able to.You should be ashamed of yourself and be more respectful. Also, the addition of 0 does impact a sum, but I fail to see how this exactly relevant when discussing the identities you mentioned, since the functions over which they sum produce no zeros whatsoever. I think you have to be a serious troll.
18 January, 2014 at 11:07 pm
Tennison
Sum of all the positive numbers is equal to a negative number ???????
How is it possible ?????????
18 March, 2018 at 11:50 pm
Angel Mendez Rivera
Summation over a set the natural numbers is only closed for a finitely many addends, not for infinitely many. This should not be surprising, since summation for finitely many addends is also commutative and associative, but is neither for infinitely many, as was demonstrated with the Riemann Theorem of Rearrangement. It is possible for the same reason that infinitely many rational numbers summed can equal an irrational number.
19 January, 2014 at 5:09 am
Anonymous
Infinity behaves in misterious ways. Why are you surprised that positive numbers can add up to a negative number in infinity, but not be touched by the counter-intuitive result of equation (2) ? The sum of rational numbers gives an irrational number as a result, in infinity… if you accept this as a well-known result, I think you can accept just as easily that adding up positive integers may lead to a negative fraction in infinity.
20 January, 2014 at 9:47 am
jj
you should only accept correct results.
while there are results that might seem counter-intuitive but are correct, there are also counter-intuitive results that are simply wrong. =)
if you actually calculate partial sums (while doing that you should [in the long run] get closer to the limit of the series, if it exists!) you will realise that if you sum (2) you really get close to 1/6 pi^2. while if you calculate partial sums of the sum of natural numbers you will realise that the number gets bigger, and the series diverges. and you can show that in under 3 lines.
calculating partial sums is no proof but maybe it will help you to visualize. convergence or divergence of the respective series can be proven without big effort.
19 March, 2018 at 12:14 am
Angel Mendez Rivera
The problem with your argument is that it ignores that any operation which maps from the subspace of functions to a subspace of function sequences is only defined for a parameter N where is in the set of natural numbers. In other words, the operation limit ({n –> Inf}, Sum[m=1,n; f(m) = m]) is actually not well-defined because the expression inside the limit is only defined if n is a natural number, which means that the co-domain of the map is very discontinuous and ill-behaved. As such, the limit to infinity is indeterminate. It is possible to prove that there are infinitely many functions which give an element of the sequence for the corresponding natural number, and it is possible to show that not all such functions have a defined limit to infinity. For example, I can define an oscillatory function f(z) bounded by the curve which continues the map of natural numbers to their respective triangular numbers, such that at every input n where n is a natural number, f(n) = n(n+1)/2, but disagrees with this curve otherwise – which it must, since by definition f(n) is oscillatory, so f(z) = k(z)*cos(z+t), where t is a fixed constant. Even without obtaining an explicit expression in terms of elementary functions, the fact that I can define this function and prove it exists within the vector space is sufficient to show that limit is actually undefined. Mathematicians only assumed the limit is infinite because they naively assumed that if the map from the set of natural numbers to sequence of partials sums exists, then there is a continuation to this map which is equivalent to the polynomial in n which classically agrees with the sum. However, this is an arbitrary, unjustified assumption by Cauchy, since there is no agreed upon consensus or rigorous definition on how to evaluate summations for non-natural inputs.
Also, Terrence Tao provided a theory which allows these series to be convergent. It seems to me you actually failed to read the article at all.
8 October, 2018 at 2:26 am
Ángel Méndez Rivera
To cast my argument with a different mold, let me rephrase my statement. The reason you are wrong is because your method of calculating partial sums is wrong, and the sequence of partial sums is not a simple growing discrete function, but rather a continuous function.
19 January, 2014 at 11:00 am
The Sum Of All Positive Numbers
[…] Numberphile and physicists Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland share one of the most mind-blowing concepts we’ve ever heard. Apparently, the sum of all positive numbers is not infinity. It’s not even a positive number. Mathlethes report here. […]
19 January, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Matt's Homepage » Blog Archive
[…] http://periodicvideos.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/thanks.html But how does it really work? TerryTao goes into tremendous detail of how the summation works and why the Grandi series can sum […]
19 January, 2014 at 1:25 pm
eric
I know I’m late to this column, but I’ve never seen these connections before. Can someone point me to some references?
19 January, 2014 at 4:56 pm
More Infinite Series Madness | Of Prime Interest
[…] The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic contin… […]
20 January, 2014 at 1:49 pm
The 1+2+3+…=-1/12 bonanza | Moses Supposes
[…] are two ways to do this: Lamb explains analytic continuation and links to Terry Tao’s great post proving the same result using calculus. Analytic continuation by imperfect analogy: I have a car […]
20 January, 2014 at 5:23 pm
Le scandale des séries divergentes ! (ou le retour de 1+2+3+4+5+… = -1/12) | Science étonnante
[…] Un excellent billet de Terence Tao qui donne des réponses à plusieurs questions qui se posent à la fin de ce billet : pourquoi la méthode zeta n’est pas stable, quelle est la connection avec Euler-McLaurin, etc. Ca picote un peu, mais il est fort le bougre ! (merci Hervé !) […]
21 January, 2014 at 11:48 am
Benjamin Sprung
When you did regroup Grandi’s series together with smooth summation (shortly before exercise 1) it should be
, right?
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
21 January, 2014 at 6:09 pm
Naturalness and Infinity | The Furloff
[…] to our emotional selves to think that stuff can cancel out or that nature abhors infinities, yet mathematicians study these things all the time and have been for nearly three […]
22 January, 2014 at 6:31 am
Here's what you get if you add up every whole number from 1 to infinity
[…] to -1/12. Watch the video above for an explanation (a technical demonstration is here; there is more than one way of getting to the same […]
24 January, 2014 at 6:08 am
An infinite series of blog posts which sums to -1/12 | The Aperiodical
[…] An old post by Terry Tao on the topic: The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic contin… […]
24 January, 2014 at 8:55 am
How (Not) to Sum the Natural Numbers: Zeta Function Regularization | 4 gravitons and a grad student
[…] This discussion is not going to be mathematically rigorous, but it should give an authentic and accurate view of where these results come from. If you’re interested in the full mathematical details, a later discussion by Numberphile should help, and the mathematically confident should read Terence Tao’s treatment from back in 2010. […]
26 January, 2014 at 11:26 am
Yes, 1+2+3+… = -1/12. Sort of. | Michael Lauer's Weblog
[…] much more satisfying. One fortuitous consequence of this brouhaha has been a lot of links to a post of Terry Tao’s of a few years ago, which I have found enormously helpful. It’s pretty […]
26 January, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Dick Gross
Terry,
This is an excellent post. If you want a historical reference to the evaluation of the zeta function at negative integers, you should look at Euler’s great paper of 1749 “Remarques sur un beau rapport…”. In this paper, he is very clear that the sums he is evaluating are not convergent in the traditional sense. Euler also discovered the functional equation of the zeta function (at positive and negative integers).
Dick Gross
27 January, 2014 at 5:00 am
David Colquhoun
I am merely an amateur mathematician, The result 1 + 2 + 3 + . . . = -1/12 appears to me to be ‘obviously’ absurd, if only because of the sign.
I would have presumed that the result is wrong because it is based on the Grandi series which does not have any well-defined sum. Yet I see that string theorists take it literally. Do you think that they are justified in doing so?
27 January, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Doug
No. As “jj” pointed out above, this is more like “pop” math. It’s cool because it’s extremely counter-intuitive. In the numberphile vid on this, when pressed for answers on how unbelievable it was, the guy filmed just cutely smiles and says “infinity” as if now it’s magically believable. Because infinity is *magic*! lols
30 January, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Kevin VanOrd
That’s an extreme mischaracterization of the Numberphile video, which did not go into nearly as much mathematical detail as Terry does, but certainly does not throw its figurative hands up in the air and say “infinity is magic lolz.” In fact, those professors go into some detail and provide multiple proofs of this particular summation. Infinity is not magic, but it is also not sensible. Your dismissal is no different from the dismissal you perceived from Drs Padilla and Copeland. Rather than make semantic points and accusations of these useful maths (I would remind you that these equations are used in physics and describe observation to essentially 100% accuracy), I’d rather see your proof showing that the sum cannot equal -1/12.
14 February, 2014 at 1:27 am
Joc
You dismiss Doug’s comment, but your dismissal is of the exact sort you claim his is. In fact, your asking for a proof showing that the sum cannot be equal to -1/12 merely shows that you do not know what a correct proof is nor how to check whether a proof is correct, otherwise you would know better than to accept the fake proof given in the Numberphile video. Any mathematician will be able to tell you that the “-1/12” is not a rational number, not to say a negative one! Anyone who does not make clear the distinction between convergent series and formal series is just deliberately misleading or misled. See Terry’s comments at https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/ZuJDv3daT9n, which show two things. Firstly, that he also thinks it should not be written as just “-1/12” because it certainly doesn’t mean that. Secondly, that some people choose to ignore the infinities in the asymptotic expansion, for questionable reasons. Remember that for a theory to have explanatory power it must not have unbounded arbitrarily chosen parameters. Discarding infinity is equivalent to saying that the theory works because we have managed to fit it to the data we have now, and if future data doesn’t agree we can easily create new cutoff functions to fit to it. In other words, we can never ever be wrong. Now that is foolish.
23 November, 2018 at 2:09 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
First, your characterization of Terry’s comments are themselves wrong, because his statement that it should not be rewritten as -1/12 was made contextually from a post-rigorous perspective, which is not what this discussion is about. As for asymptotic expansions, this article itself clarified this and made the approach rigorous. I fail to understand your point.
-1/12 is most certainly a rational number. -12 is an integer. So is 1. They are coprime. -1/12 is a ratio of the two. It is hence by definition of a rational number. So I have no idea of what you are talking about.
It seems to me the only person confusing formal series and convergent series is you here, because no one here talked about convergent series at any point except for you. And there is no need to accept the proof Numberphile gave – which is not a proof, but a heuristic demonstration that served as an introduction to a video-series – because we already have rigorous proofs and explanations.
9 October, 2014 at 11:58 am
Anonymous
dude, you’re from gamespot!
23 November, 2018 at 2:10 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
Did you bother to read the article at all? Because the answer is literally there.
27 January, 2014 at 8:49 pm
Apparently 1+2+3+... = -1/12
[…] to do this is by something called analytic continuation. Some further reading if you are curious: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/0…-continuation/. Might have to do a bit of wiki hyperlink chasing […]
28 January, 2014 at 7:42 pm
James
Is there a formal reason for why the following naive manipulation is not problematic?
S = 1+1+1+… = 1+(1+1+…) = 1+S => 0=1
3 February, 2014 at 11:25 am
Andre
Yes, exactly here: …)
This is where this manipulation fails.
14 February, 2014 at 1:34 am
Joc
Indeed it is problematic, and it is also problematic that the Numberphile video committed exactly the same mistake when he shifted one series by adding an extra zero term in front and claimed that it had the same value.
24 December, 2017 at 6:59 pm
Sam Lav
Come on guys, this is a serious mathematical blog held by a field medalist. No one comes here to read about f****** numberphile videos and high school math cranks.
23 November, 2018 at 1:59 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
It was an intentional mistake. The whole point was to do a heuristic demonstration, and then in a later video, introduce the more correct, rigorous and proper way of getting and using this result, and they did indeed follow up with such a video. Perhaps people should look into things before commenting about them, ¿eh?
29 January, 2014 at 4:14 pm
Open Thread « Econstudentlog
[…] I felt pretty much that way after watching the video below and skimming parts of Terence Tao’s related blogpost. […]
29 January, 2014 at 6:37 pm
The Sum of Positive Integers | Quantitative Scientific Solutions Blog
[…] technically misleading as well). For a much more correct (and technical discussion), see this blog post by Terence […]
4 February, 2014 at 12:09 am
Din ecosistemul științei: Cum folosesc matematica fizicienii | Isarlâk
[…] februarie. De asemenea (credit Steven Strogatz, pe Twitter) blogul Scientific American. Vezi și un mesaj mai vechi al lui Terry Tao in care se discută background-ul […]
4 February, 2014 at 9:19 am
One number to rule them all: -1/12 « Why Evolution Is True
[…] Before you all start chipping in below pointing out basic mistakes in the maths (I don’t think there are any), read this response by Tony Padilla (I got lost when the Greek letters began) or, for the truly mathematically endowed, watch this extra and more elaborate proof which takes you through Euler’s calculation and read this mind-bogglingly difficult piece. […]
4 February, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Allen
In regards to the proof of why 1+2+3+4+….=-1/12 simpler proof,
When they move over the bottom S2 and say it is the same as the top S2. I believe that the bottom number if given the same number of terms as the top number would be equal to S2 plus infinity or S2 minus infinity. The lower moved over version of S2 is S2-1 after 1 term, then S2 +1 after 2 terms then S2-2 then S2 +2 then -3 then +3 then -4 then +4 eventually going to – infinity and +infinity greater to make the result they want by adding the 2 S2’s together. As they did with S1, one could argue that that averages to 0. That may be true mathematically in which case I wholeheartedly accept their result. But if you just go with this idea for a second, the result of what they call 2 * S2 would be S2 + S2 + or (and?) – infinity. Working through the problem that equals S1 so in the end, the series 1+2+3…… =-1/12 + or(and?) – infinity over 6 (which is still + or(and?) – infinity). I find that won’t damage the significance of -1/12 to string theory but I find this result, which I think is correct, much more philosophically rewarding. The principle of + and – which could be thought of as + and – infinity or + or – infinity is a fundamental concept in a number of religions (buddhism, shintoism, taoism) and since mathematically + and – infinity equals 0 it does nothing to the original claim that 1 + 2 + 3 +……=-1/12.
5 February, 2014 at 1:44 am
fintan
Dear Dr Tao, thank you for your nice presentation. You’ve accounted for the inconsistencies between (4)(5) and (6), but not for the more obvious problem: “Most obviously, the summands on the left are all positive, but the right-hand sides can be zero or negative.” This problem means that either there is a logical flaw in the statement S: “summing numbers that are all positive cannot give zero or a negative result”, or there is a logical flaw in the proofs for (4)(5) and (6). I guess statement S follows from Peano’s axioms. Can you say something about where the logical flaw lies?
5 February, 2014 at 8:03 am
Terence Tao
See the paragraph before equation (16), or my more recent discussion at https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/ZuJDv3daT9n
4 October, 2019 at 5:51 pm
Ashok M Dhareshwar
Professor Tao,
This link, as well as other links to your contributions at plus.google.com, are no longer available. Would it be possible to give alternate links and/or references?
Thanks.
[Now uploaded to https://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/google-buzz/google-post-on-123-1-12/ -T.]
6 February, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Philipp Scholz
Its a question on the extra footage video:
So i showed this to my dad who is a physician and he had the problem that you simply set s=-1.
In the series 1+2x+3x^2+4x^3+…=1/(1-x)^2 my father sad that the |x| has to be <1 |x|<1 because if you set |x|=1/-1 you would get a problem. So how do you justify that you just break that rule/insert s=-1?
7 February, 2014 at 5:15 am
¿Es cierto que 1+2+3+4+…=-1/12? | Blog del Departamento de Álgebra
[…] Para leer más sobre el tema, recomiendo los excelentes posts del maestro Terence Tao en Google+ y en su blog. […]
7 February, 2014 at 5:39 am
Linkage | An Ergodic Walk
[…] some press now. It’s part of the Numberphile series. Terry Tao (as usual) has a pretty definitive post on […]
9 February, 2014 at 7:19 am
Nature already patched it | The Gauge Connection
[…] could say. Of course, smarter mathematicians are well aware of this as you can read from Terry Tao’s blog. Indeed, Terry Tao is one of the smartest living mathematicians. One of his latest successes is […]
9 February, 2014 at 4:51 pm
MrCactu5 (@MonsieurCactus)
Does (11) just say that the integeral of your cutoff function and the riemann sum of the cutoff function differ by 1/2 in the large N limit?
10 February, 2014 at 2:38 am
Series convergentes y métodos de sumación | Adsu's Blog
[…] este post, Tao intenta dar una interpretación consistente de estos valores, y lo hace basandose en […]
10 February, 2014 at 9:07 am
The sum of the natural numbers is -1/12? | Scientific Clearing House
[…] Terence Tao has a nice blog post on evaluating such sums. In a “smoothed” version of the sum, it can be thought of as […]
15 February, 2014 at 2:28 pm
Сумма всех натуральных чисел: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +… » CreativLabs
[…] два раза не ходить, ещё пара интересных примеров с […]
15 February, 2014 at 7:28 pm
Сумма всех натуральных чисел: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +… | Вести3.ру — Информационный журнал
[…] два раза не ходить, ещё пара интересных примеров с […]
20 March, 2014 at 12:07 am
Jamilasadek
I disagree completely with this proof because it can never work you need to set a point where to stop to make this proof. For example:
S1= 1-1+1-1+1-1+1…..
2S1=0+1-1+1-1+1-1+1…..
now here is where we go wrong. You need to have the same number of ones written wherever u stop so the above means that 2S1=2 which means S1=1 not 1/2. So it all depends on where you stop and wherever you stop there is a different answer given. So this previous cannot work as you are not supposed to stop. So my whole point is that this proof cannot work as you have to set a limit to it for it to work.
CASE CLOSED!
23 November, 2018 at 1:57 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
“I disagree completely with this proof because it can never work you need to set a point where to stop to make this proof.”
This is nonsense. The summation has infinitely many terms. Hence, BY DEINITION, you cannot have a “point” at which to stop, because if you do, then you are no longer dealing with an infinite summation.
“For example:
S1= 1-1+1-1+1-1+1…..
2S1=0+1-1+1-1+1-1+1…..
now here is where we go wrong. You need to have the same number of ones written wherever u stop…”
No, you do not. First, the summation is there regardless of whether you write every term or not. The summation, if it has value, then it must have it independent of whether you can write or not. This is a mathematical principle. Second of all, the number of digits in the first line is already the same intrinsically as the second line, because both amounts are infinite AND countable, so by Cantor’s theorem, they are the same number of terms.
“…so the above means that 2S1=2 which means S1=1 not 1/2.”
I already disproved this.
“So it all depends on where you stop and wherever you stop there is a different answer given.”
You do not stop at all to begin with. You fail to understand the basic definition of infinity.
“So this previous cannot work as you are not supposed to stop. So my whole point is that this proof cannot work as you have to set a limit to it for it to work.”
No, you do not. At no point in time did he need to set a limit on where to stop to prove it.
“CASE CLOSED!”
Indeed, and you lose.
22 March, 2014 at 4:57 am
Robert Aldridge
Grandi’s Series: In my opinion the answer is indeterminate. It’s either 0 or 1 but we don’t know which.
Every proof I’ve seen so far proves that the average of 0 and 1 is a half.
I agree that the average is a half but this isn’t the question – we want the sum.
1-S = S seems to prove the sum is a half but the S’s are NOT equal.
Both S’s are indeterminate but one is 0 while the other is 1 so we can’t rearrange to get 2S.
23 November, 2018 at 1:51 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
What you state is nonsense. They are the same. The article gave a rigorous proof that the sum is 1/2 without any mention of the average. Did you bother to read?
22 March, 2014 at 4:57 pm
Fabi
@Grandi’s series:
from the term above?
after Taylor expansion.
equals 1 near the origin?
how do you recover
I only get
Or do you assume, that
22 March, 2014 at 5:05 pm
Terence Tao
Yes; see the second full paragraph after (10).
23 March, 2014 at 3:31 pm
Fabi
Thanks for the quick answer.
I intended to do your exercises since it seems fun, but I’m already stuck at exercise 1. I think the proof is similar to the one above the exercise. Maybe I didn’t get it right:
Let
be twice differentiable. From taylor expansion we see:
And
If we put that in the smoothed Grandi’s series after the regroup we obtain
Since
is compact supported the summand is
Ok.
But you claimed that 1. the sum is only non-zero if
and 2. thus the sum is
.
I don’t get neither 1. and 2. …
(Yesterday I thought I had it, but I misread again…)
25 March, 2014 at 10:37 am
Anonymous
Dear Prof. Tao,
Can your approach be used to show
where the numbers
are given in terms of the Bernoulli numbers?
The equations after (20) of this blog post look very similar.
Can this be used to shift the sum of the Riemann
-function and its odd derivatives from the critical line in the Levinson-Conrey method as claimed here?
. Can this really be used to show that almost all of the zeros of the zeta function are on the critical line?
They also claim to construct a Dirichlet series which obeys a functional equation coming from this shift in addition to properties coming from the Riemann functional equation
26 March, 2014 at 10:32 am
George
I can’t say I can comprehend everything written here. However, this I know as fact. I believe that Terry would also agree with me (I think).
The series 4+8+12+16+… is not the same as the series 0+4+0+8+… If we could describe “1+2+3+4+…” as a number, then it is a different number than “0+1+0+2+…” In other words, if you are going to say that c=1+2+3+4+…, then keep it consistent and don’t change the definition of “c” for usage in the same equation. Using it inconsistently is like having c=5 and c=4 in the same equation. In other words, it would be having c equal to two different numbers, which defies laws of mathematical rigor that allow us to only assign one definition to a term.
26 March, 2014 at 2:53 pm
George
While it would take work for me to learn all the stuff needed for me to get all of those integrals, the fact that 0+4+0+8+… is not the same as 4+8+12+16… demonstrates that 1+2+3+4+… is definitely equal to an infinitely large number rather than -1/12. In fact, if you notice, [1-(1+2)/4]*(1-4)=-1/12, explaining how -1/12 is achieved in the first place. 1-4 is from c-4c.
Pretending as if 0+4+0+8+… is the same as 4+8+12+16+… and then substituting the two series so easily is sure to get an answer that is false. No matter how amazing the math is afterwards, if you screw up in the beginning then you will not find the truth. If anyone considers 0+4+0+8+… to be the same as 4+8+12+16+…, then they are simply deluding themselves (which many smart people are keen on doing). Complicating the math is not going to change the result. The wiki page makes the same error, even with the zeta function. It STILL puts a space (in other words +0) between each number in the series, leading to a number that hides the truth.
27 March, 2014 at 8:11 am
George
I believe though that you stated that traditional methods of treating infinity do not allow for this. The reason why traditional methods do not allow for this is because 0+4+0+8+… is a different value from 4+8+12+16+…, and thus, having c=1+2+3+4+… and calculating 4c to be 0+4+0+8+… instead of having c=4+8+12+16+… is wrong, ruining all the mathematics done afterwards.
27 March, 2014 at 10:32 pm
ghmath
Hello Professor Tao,
An interesting article, thanks. This article “whispered” other idea about polylogarithms and divisors sum series estimation. This method can be extended for them also.
Thanks,
Gevorg.
31 March, 2014 at 9:35 am
The Sum of Positive Integers | Quantitative Scientific Solutions | QS-2
[…] technically misleading as well). For a much more correct (and technical discussion), see this blog post by Terence […]
4 May, 2014 at 2:44 am
Aake Roffo
[…] From https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-func… […]
8 May, 2014 at 3:25 pm
Kim
Hello Prof. Tao,

in paragraph 1 (smoothed asymptotics) you didn’t define
I assumed it is

In paragraph 1, there are no problems with that definition.
However, in paragraph 2 (at the beginning) you use the Euler-Maclaurin formula in paragraph 1 with
where
.
What is
for
where
?
Confused,
Kim
8 May, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Terence Tao
The complex parameter
in Section 2 is unrelated to the regularity parameter
in Section 1.
18 June, 2014 at 12:50 am
Grandi’s series and taking sums of infinite series by averaging | Scorkle's Media
[…] was also made to Terry Tao’s blog post explaining some different ways to overcome non-converging series with alternative outcomes (i.e. […]
18 August, 2014 at 6:00 am
Mark D. Normand
This posting contains references to equations (21), (22) and (23) but contains no equations labeled with those numbers and it is not immediately obvious which equations should be so labeled.
[Corrected, thanks – T.]
18 August, 2014 at 2:10 pm
More on 1+2+3+…=-1/12 | Technology
[…] of series that we are most interested in. Compare this to the mathematical proofs given for example here or here. The most elegant proof relies on complex analysis which is a subject typically taught at […]
20 September, 2014 at 9:16 am
Czy 1+2+3+…=-1/12? Ramanujan, Euler i Tao o szeregach rozbieżnych | Nie od razu naukę zbudowano
[…] ta jest uproszczoną wersją podejścia z bloga Terence’a Tao, znakomitego matematyka, medalisty Fieldsa. W istocie jest ona ogólniejsza, niż się może […]
1 November, 2014 at 2:02 am
Jose Javier Garcia Moreta
for the generalized harmonic series should we ahve that
11 November, 2014 at 6:36 am
Antoine C
Dear Pr Tao, since i’ve watched the numberphile video on the fact that 1+2+3+4+….+-1/12, i’ve spend severals hours looking for a non-debated proof. As you’re a great mathematician, i’m totally ready to accept that result but how to you explain the fact that it’s still fully debated (at least among non-experts mathematicians, as far as i know) ?
23 November, 2014 at 10:40 pm
Grandi’s series |
[…] was also made to Terry Tao’s blog post explaining some different ways to overcome non-converging series with alternative outcomes (i.e. […]
15 December, 2014 at 11:01 pm
Tom Copeland
I just wrote out explicitly in “Bernoulli Appells” at my website how the two sets of Bernoulli numbers
are related through the Bernoulli polynomials and how they play out in a simple proof of Faulhaber’s formula and your formula 19.
17 January, 2015 at 2:10 pm
Trivial Zeroes of the Riemann-Zeta Function and 1+2+3+4+ | Ah, Math?
[…] This post is inspired by Terence Tao’s post on summing divergent series: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun…. […]
14 February, 2015 at 1:40 pm
Синиша Бубоња
Dear professor Tao,
first of all, sorry for my bad English. This article is great! I read it several times. I explore divergent series and founded general method which actually works. Inspired divergent series I defined limit of a function at singular point and I was surprised when I discovered that the method can be applied to compute divergent integrals. I think that this interpretation is correct. I method tested for all series and integrals which I found. I’m sorry that my ignorance of language hampers to write what I want… To a lack of understanding of the problem comes because he viewed from the wrong angle.
https://m4t3m4t1k4.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/general-method-for-summing-divergent-series-determination-of-limits-of-divergent-sequences-and-functions-in-singular-points-v2/
Sincerely, Sinisa
30 March, 2015 at 4:40 am
Peter Hausdorff S. K.
Reblogged this on Free Open Mathematics Society.
16 April, 2015 at 12:26 am
francisrlb
Could you explain how you get from equation 23 to equation 24. This step is completely mysterious to me. Thanks
16 April, 2015 at 8:51 am
Terence Tao
Apply (23) with N replaced by
for some large
, then sum. Then, take
to infinity.
25 January, 2017 at 3:30 pm
Pablo C.Mog.
Dear Prof Tao,
Sorry to bother you, but I’m stuck in the same part as Francis (equations 23 and 24)
I arrived to this:
∑n-s η(nN-1) – cη,-sN1-s=∑n-s η(n2-jN-1) – cη,-s N1-s 2j(1-s) + ∑k=1k=j O(2-kN-1)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
With Re(1-s)>0
As j tends to infinity, terms (3) and (4) diverge, and their sum seem not yet to be proven to converge.
Could this be done?: Term (5)=O(N-1) (1-2-j-1)*2 and as j→∞, Term(5)→O(N-1)
If this is the case then I could do (1)+(2)-(5)→Value(s, η)
But I couldn’t either prove the independence of the Value form η.
Thanks
28 January, 2017 at 9:38 am
Terence Tao
(5) is a convergent sequence in
, and (1) and (2) do not depend on
, so the sum of (3) and (4) must converge also. The partial sum in (5) differs from the infinite sum by
, and this can be used to establish (24) for
by a suitable definition of
.
See also Lemma 5 of https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/254a-notes-1-elementary-multiplicative-number-theory/ for a similar argument.
Finally, to typeset TeX on this blog, see https://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/
20 July, 2015 at 4:17 pm
1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+…= -1/12 | Knight's Atari
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun… [2] http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Ford/RaymondAyoub.pdf [3] […]
22 July, 2015 at 4:03 am
Anonymous
This interesting paper on Euler’s life and work gives in particular many details on the history of the “Basel problem” (on the evaluation of
) and its solution by Euler in 1734, and also Euler’s discovery of
functional equation in 1749 (almost 110 years before Riemann!).
evaluation) states that “the arithmetic nature of
remains an unsolved problem” – appeared only 5 years before Apery’s theorem (on the irrationality of
).
Interestingly, this 1974 article (considering also Euler’s work on
24 July, 2015 at 9:24 pm
[Toán] Sum of nature numbers | Mangala
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun… […]
16 August, 2015 at 6:18 pm
David Speyer
Apologies if this was already mentioned somewhere and I missed it: Here is a quick way to see that equation (14) gives Bernoulli numbers without going through the Euler-Maclaurin computation. Put
. Then (14) gives
The sum is

Since
, the repeated derivative is
.
gives
.
Plugging in
The integral is a
function and gives
, so
This matches the desired formula up to the
, but fortunately the odd indexed Bernoulli numbers are zero anyway.
Thanks very much for this post. For no good reason, I was thinking a bunch last week about understanding
functions at
without the functional equation, and this was very clarifying.
15 October, 2015 at 1:17 pm
1 + 2 + 3 + … = – 1/12 and Related Results | beorminga
[…] blog by the eminent Australian/American mathematician Terry Tao. In one of his published articles there, entitled The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and […]
6 November, 2015 at 10:14 am
Quora
What’s the intuition behind the equation [math]1+2+3+\cdots = -\tfrac{1}{12}[/math]?
To the best of my knowledege, there is two ways of giving a finite value to a diverging sum : * Choosing a different method of summation * Analytic continuation of a well choosen function The “standard addition properties” are not conserved when you…
9 February, 2016 at 5:14 am
Erik Quaeghebeur
Can one find a series
and complex number
such that
formally, but which after analytic continuation gives a finite value
?
9 February, 2016 at 2:09 pm
Terence Tao
Yes, if one is willing to use rather artificial-looking series. For instance, the series
telescopes to zero for any
, but formally is
at
.
9 February, 2016 at 2:37 pm
Erik Quaeghebeur
Thanks!
14 February, 2016 at 2:13 pm
Cre Master
Hi Terence,
I need your help resolving something regarding -1/12. I have been discussing it over on Reddit;
https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/45qw5i/trying_to_nail_down_the_112_from_the_numberphile/
There I pointed out that graphing 1/2x(x+1) leaves an area under the x axis equal to -1/12 something I found to be really interesting.
When I went to the Wikipedia page it showed a graphic which stated “The first four partial sums of the series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯. The parabola is their smoothed asymptote; its y-intercept is −1/12” with a link to this article.
I thought this -1/12 could have been an artifact of the smoothing since when all numbers are included the intercept would seem to be -1/8.
I have raised this a few times and mathematicians seem more interested in dismissing the Numberphile video than delivering a considered answer so I’m hoping you might give me your thoughts.
Kind regards,
Cre
24 November, 2018 at 11:09 pm
sam palmer
Hi Cre,
I too was wondering this and I found the answer in the talk section of the Wiki article.
The intercept of what is drawn really would be -1/8
What apparently is going on is that if you imagine all possible quadratics that fit the function, as in functions of the form (n-x)(n+1-x)/2 for x between 0 and 1, then the average y intercept is indeed -1/12
Maybe someone should edit the article?
26 November, 2018 at 3:20 am
sam palmer
Actually sorry, it looks like the wiki article is saying that the parabola that that goes through all those half way points has intercept -1/12, when it really has intercept -1/8. But actually I didn’t read it properly and that is not what’s drawn. So the wikipedia article is fine.
15 March, 2016 at 9:22 am
Biases between consecutive primes | What's new
[…] argue this rigorously when using smoother weights like ). The term can be interpreted as , as per this previous post. Assuming this approximation, we obtain the […]
22 March, 2016 at 1:33 pm
Katsikogiannis
Greetings Pr. Tao,
After reaching the seemingly inconsistent-with-each-other equations 8 and 9, you eventually conclude that there are certain quantities affecting 8 and 9, that the initial techniques used are objectively not powerful enough to contain and one has to use cut-off functions and smooth sums, to clear things up.
Though, I have to point out that the techniques initially used are actually powerful and reliable enough and the actual reason 8 and 9 seem inconsistent is a certain misconception you base your thought process on.
That, is considering the mathematical structures in the middle parts of 8 and 9 to equal each other, based on the fact that they share certain properties (that do not fully define them) while failing to keep in mind certain additional characteristics that were previously constructed to them and that are responsible for the results you associate them with.
More specifically, keeping in mind the way that 8 and 9’s partial sums are defined (that is the way they are associated to the partial sums of equation 5), we have for each case:
S_1 = (1+1) S_1= (1-1)
S_2 = (1+1) + (2+1) S_2= (1-1) + 2
S_3 = (1+1) + (2+1) + (3+1) S_3= (1-1) + 2 + 3
… …
S_n = (1+1) + (2+1) + (3+1) + … S_n= (1-1) + 2 + 3 +…
As shown above, there is a constant difference in the way the partial sums are defined. A difference that is persistent for the n_th partial sum, as n tends to infinity.
That means the n_th partial sums perceived as 1+2+3+… and 0+1+2+3+… as n tends to infinity in the middle of 8 and 9, are a couple of endlessly expanding collections of summed terms that are constantly different to each other, banishing the case where 8 and 9 contradict each other, when one includes the necessities above.
In the meanwhile, notice that if one excludes the originally summed (1-1) from 9 and begins with the term 2, so that the partial sums coincide with those of 8 and thus allowing one to validly consider the middle parts of 8 and 9 equal to each other, then the way 9’s partial sums are associated with those of 5 is affected, essentially causing the new equation 9 to be defined as
S – 1 + (n+1)
(Where S is the n_th partial sum of equation 5 as n tends to infininity)
and not as
S – 1
as it was originally defined to be, preventing one from leading themselves to any inconsistencies, yet again.
That’s all for now.
G. Katsikogiannis.
21 November, 2017 at 8:48 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
The problem with your approach is that you assume that as N —> infinity, N behaved as a natural number. You cannot evaluate the limit of the expression as N approaches Infinity if N is not generalized to all real numbers, because N is not strictly a natural number. Besides, since there is a discontinuity at every natural number, the polynomial with which we define the Nth term of the sequence of partial sums is not unique, so you cannot find the limit of the sequence as N goes to infinity.
22 November, 2017 at 8:30 am
Ángel Méndez Rivera
You’ve also assumed that summation of infinitely many summands is associative, which is not the case.
15 May, 2016 at 5:53 pm
Gold Nugget!!! – The Culture
[…] can read more here […]
20 June, 2016 at 1:17 am
Abhishek
Sir,
I would like to know why the right hand side of (1) doesn’t converge conditionally for 0 < Re(s) $\leq$ 1 Img(s) $\neq$ 0. The infinitely many sign changes due to the imaginary part makes it hard for me to prove the statement.
20 June, 2016 at 5:33 am
Anonymous
At least, for real
(for which the terms are positive) the statement is trivial.
20 June, 2016 at 7:36 am
Terence Tao
Estimate the partial sums on an interval of the form
for some small but fixed
and some very large
, the point being that there is almost no oscillation in this partial sum if
is small enough.
20 June, 2016 at 1:23 pm
Anonymous
What is known about the Cesaro summation properties for this series inside the critical strip? Is it possible to use this (or higher order) Cesaro summation for the analytic continuation of
into the critical strip?
21 June, 2016 at 7:35 am
Terence Tao
Cesaro summation only smooths out oscillations in the range
(say) that occur at wavelength significantly less than
. The summand
oscillates with wavelength comparable to
in this range and so convergence is not significantly improved by Cesaro summation. However gentler summation methods, such as Abel summation or (tautologically) zeta function regularisation, will indeed smooth out these oscillations and allow one to extract out a limiting value
for the sum.
24 June, 2016 at 7:42 pm
Zz
Hi mr.Tao, i want to share with you and your visitors one result that i´ve found working with prime numbers:
”
“For every p prime > 3 exists k natural, where
or in other words:
best regards!
*correcting latex sintaxis, I apologize this is my first message*
25 June, 2016 at 12:05 am
Anonymous
It is easy to verify that this property holds (more generally) for any odd integer
which is not divisible by
.
25 June, 2016 at 8:35 am
Zz
Dear Anonymous, you are right.
prime and
natural, exists
natural, where
”
Also I want to add that this property also holds if we say “For all
or in other words:
26 June, 2016 at 10:29 am
Anonymous
Since
, this property is implied by the (apparently weaker) previous property.
2 July, 2016 at 6:51 am
254A, Supplement 3: The Gamma function and the functional equation (optional) | What's new
[…] to extend meromorphically to the entire complex plane by using the Euler-Maclaurin formula; see this previous blog post. However, we will not pursue this approach to the meromorphic continuation of zeta further […]
16 July, 2016 at 6:59 am
Anonymous
please, use \dotsb from amsmath.sty instead of \dots after a binary operator such as + or -, so the dots are aligned vertically on the math axis.
23 July, 2016 at 6:33 am
Anonymous
Is there any known criterion to decide which any given (classically divergent) series still have a (more or less objective) unique “sum” – determined by the above (or similar) summation methods?
26 July, 2016 at 7:04 pm
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + … = -1/12 | Math Problem
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-func… […]
11 September, 2016 at 12:44 am
1+2+3+4+5…=-1/12 – Fourierinformationsir
[…] this identity is not literally correct, it is still in some sense meaningful. There are far more complex and insightful proofs and interpretations of this identity, but they are a little hard to follow. […]
22 September, 2016 at 8:45 am
254A, Notes 1: Elementary multiplicative number theory | What's new
[…] smoother sums such as (5) with smooth, thanks to tools such as the Poisson summation formula. See this previous blog post for some related […]
22 September, 2016 at 9:53 pm
246A, Notes 1: Complex differentiation | What's new
[…] leads to generalised summation methods such as zeta function regularisation, which are discussed in this previous blog post. However, we will not use such generalised interpretations of summation very much in this […]
18 October, 2016 at 8:33 pm
Reeshad Arian
Is there a way to sum factorials? If so, is there a use for it?
22 December, 2016 at 1:30 pm
CodeLabMaster
The reason for using the
norm is that
so
goes to
as
(where
). When we set
, we see that increasing
does nothing to help bound our norm more tightly (whereas before, repeated differentiation of the monomial zeroed it out). I’m not sure how one would go about fixing that.
26 December, 2016 at 4:48 pm
John Mango
It doesn’t really bother me, but someone pointed out to me that
is not really a norm since it vanishes for all
. I thought the jargon was “Sobolev” norm, but that’s wrong.
27 January, 2017 at 12:08 pm
¿Qué sorpresas esconden las sumas infinitas? I | Una vista circular
[…] 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ….. Yo he aprendido este enfoque, que quizás no es aún muy conocido, en un magnífico post en el blog de Terence Tao. Mi objetivo en esta serie de posts es dar los detalles imprescindibles […]
30 January, 2017 at 9:25 pm
kolmogorovscale
Reblogged this on Stat Phys Bio Chem.
25 June, 2017 at 3:51 pm
Why -1/12? – Maths and Machine Learning
[…] very thorough (and reasonably accessible) discussion of the above series can be found in Terrence Tao’s blog post. In this post, I will not be attempting to either match the rigor or the comprehensiveness of […]
22 July, 2017 at 7:03 am
Dr. Enoch Opeyemi
Greetings Prof. Tao,
Over the years,I have been working on the Riemann Hypothesis and I have recently found some results that might be interesting to you sir.
I would like your comments and contributions on them because I got to a point at which I need to use analytic continuation method on my finding.
Thank you Sir!
6 September, 2017 at 6:04 am
Zeta function regularization – Amplitudes. . .
[…] you can read about divergent series in the following post by Terence Tao and in the book Divergent Series by Hardy. The Riemann hypothesis is an open problem in math, and […]
9 September, 2017 at 2:00 am
Jose Javier Garcia Moreta
Dear professor tao.. for the case of the general harmonic series
\sum_{n=0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{(n+a)}? is this \-Psi(a) or \|-\Psi (a)+log(a) ??
which one is the correct regularized result ??
17 September, 2017 at 11:52 am
Bernard Montaron
Here is another strange equality, which might be compared to equation (7):




And here is the proof of this: Clearly 10S = S – 1 (!)
And since 1/9 = 0.111111… this leads to
You can generalize this to any rational number, like e.g.
And with 1/7 = 0.142857142857… it follows that
Sorry about this!
1 November, 2017 at 9:13 am
B. Koller
A question of terminology :
I have a rather naive question. We can prove in a strictly mathematical sense that the sum over all the natural numbers must be positive, for instance by induction. If on the other side we put the sum of all natural numbers equal to -1/12 then we prove the contradiction -1/12 > 0 and one knows that from a contradiction everything follows.
So should we not write instead of the equal sign =, which stands for an equivalence relation and is therefore transitive, the sign : from logic which is in my understanding not an equivalence relation and is not giving a contradiction. I know this is not done usually in mathematics, but it would have the advantage to create less misunderstandings.
Thanks
PS. Prof. Tao approach gave me a much better understanding of infinite series, thanks a lot.
21 November, 2017 at 8:42 pm
Ángel Méndez Rivera
“We can prove in a strictly mathematical sense that the sum over all the natural numbers must be positive, for instance by induction.”
This is not true. You can only prove by induction that the sum of finitely many addends, all of which are elements of set of natural numbers, must itself be a natural number. However, this proof cannot be executed with infinitely many addends, since it can be rigorously proven that infinite sums are in general not commutative, nor are they closed under any subset of the real numbers, nor are they associative.
“If on the other side we put the sum of all natural numbers equal to -1/12 then we prove the contradiction -1/12 > 0”
You’re assuming the sum is greater than zero, which is not. Terence Tao provided an explanation of why this is the case. Whenever N is finite, the term of the highest order in asymptotic expansion, C(η,1)N^2, is always positive and larger in magnitude than 1/12. However, this can be shown false whenever N is infinite.
“So should we not write instead of the equal sign =, which stands for an equivalence relation and is therefore transitive, the sign : from logic which is in my understanding not an equivalence relation and is not giving a contradiction.”
There is no contradiction. Mathematicians have been using = for centuries, and the reason is that the usage of it is not wrong.
“I know this is not done usually in mathematics, but it would have the advantage to create less misunderstandings.”
There is no misunderstanding. The = is meant literally here, because there are methods to prove that both expressions in the equation are EQUAL, they do not merely correspond to each other, but are actually equivalent.
8 October, 2018 at 2:21 am
Ángel Méndez Rivera
Also, to add to my response to the comment, your claim that everything follows from a contradiction is not true. The principle of explosion is merely an axiom of classical propositional logic, but arithmetic first-order logic uses a Hilbert-style deduction system, in which the principle of explosion cannot be proven nor disproven.
30 November, 2017 at 3:17 pm
1+2+3+4+ … = –1/12 | Maths with a Pinch of Salt
[…] Terence Tao (o różnych sposobach „sumowania” nieskończonych sum) […]
14 December, 2017 at 1:26 pm
1+2+3+4+ … = –1/12 – Mathematica cum grano salis
[…] Terence Tao (on the many ways of making sense of „impossible” sums) […]
3 March, 2018 at 5:27 am
Aditya Ghosh
Reblogged this on Mathematics Support.
3 May, 2018 at 1:44 am
Clément Caubel
Just to mention a little mistake/typo: after the proof of the Euler-MacLaurin formula (22), when deducing the claim (14), the left hand side is
(and not
). Also, the size
is used during the introduction, and then replaced by
.
This gives me the opportunity to thank you warmly for sharing your notes on this blog!
[Corrected, thanks -T.]
7 July, 2018 at 1:32 pm
Is String Theory Built On Funny Math? | Physics Forums
[…] if you want more heavy math see the blog by Terry Tao the guy that started me thinking about this: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010…tion-and-real-variable-analytic-continuation/ Now the 64 million dollar question is this, Look in video 1 – he opens a string theory text – low […]
1 August, 2018 at 8:00 am
The Sum Of All Numbers Is -1/12? – This Week I Found Out
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun… […]
5 August, 2018 at 9:41 am
Fake papers #1: L’uomo che scambiò la Zeta di Riemann per un polinomio | Maddmaths!
[…] Per farsi un’idea di come questa procedura sia di difficile comprensione per i non esperti, usando la continuazione analitica si arriva a scrivere [1+2+3+4+dots “=” -frac{1}{12}] dove i puntini a sinistra dell’uguale indicano che vanno sommati tutti i numeri naturali, mentre l’uguale è scritto tra virgolette proprio ad indicare che non si tratta di una vera uguaglianza, ma di un’uguaglianza che ha senso usando la procedura di continuazione analitica. Non ha infatti molto senso pensare che la somma di tutti i numeri naturali, infiniti e tutti positivi, sia uguale a un numero razionale e per di più negativo! In effetti la formula nasce dalla continuazione analitica proprio della funzione zeta di Riemann, e ci dice che (-frac{1}{12}) è il valore della funzione (zeta(s)) per (s=-1). Se volete saperne di più su somme di questo tipo, senza usare la continuazione analitica, potete consultare l’articolo tecnico sul blog di Terence Tao. […]
7 October, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Jotvansh
Hi, Professor Tao
I am a highschool student, I was really fascinated with with this theorem as it contradicts the basic principles of mathematics, so I chose this my mathematical reasacrch project, however I have to prove this summation in an less rigorous way. I have used Grandi series and Ceasaro convergent in order to use for this equation. Although, I am not really sure it would be correct to use them to manipulate the series.
8 October, 2018 at 2:09 am
Ángel Méndez Rivera
First of all, you are wrong. The theorem does not contradict the basic principles of mathematics. In fact, I question whether you can even correctly list all the basic principles of mathematics you are appealing to. My guess is that you cannot. This is not surprising, since such principles are typically never taught until you have reached a graduate level of mathematical education. In any case, the very fact that it is a theorem implies it cannot be in contradiction with the principles, because by definition, theorems are derivable only from principles. If you conclude that mathematical claim contradicts the principles, then either the claim is not a theorem, or else your understanding of the principles is incorrect.
Second of all, Cèsaro summations are not useable for this series, because this series is outside the domain of the Cèsaro summations. The Grandi series is not linearly nor polynomially related to the Ramanujan series. You must use some other method to prove the theorem.
29 January, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Jerome
@RIvera I support your patience.
A small linguistic remark. In the context of these ‘provocative’ limits (they are not a provocation at all to me.).
I might be good avoid saying ‘this series has such limit’ and say this series is given such limit.
In fact what matters before all is that the limit we GIVE commute with finite sums.
29 July, 2019 at 4:17 am
Karl Svozil
May formula (12) not also be interpreted as a consequence or rather an instance of Ritt’s theorem? And therefore (14) a generalization thereof?
(Please excuse this naive question of a humble physicist; and thank you for this very nice post!)
30 August, 2019 at 11:26 pm
Terence Tao - Understanding 1+2+3+...=-1/12 without Complex Analysis - Nevin Manimala's Blog
[…] by /u/MysteriousSeaPeoples [link] […]
29 September, 2019 at 4:44 am
Michele Nardelli
Dear Prof. Tao,
I deal mainly of the new possible mathematical connections, between various formulas of some sectors of theoretical physics and some formulas of specific areas of Number Theory, especially the mathematics of the Indian genius S. Ramanujan (Rogers-Ramanujan identity, mock theta functions and partition functions) and I have already obtained several interesting results from various connections with some sectors of M-Theory, Particle Physics, and black holes physics. I think it’s important to highlight that the values of any entropies (or masses), from which you can to obtain mass (or entropy), radius and temperature of a black hole, by the develop with a formula which contains two results of mock theta functions, provide ALWAYS solutions that, in my humble opinion, could be interesting and significant, as it very closed (practically almost equals) to the mathematical constant Phi (golden ratio) and the Riemann zeta function, precisely ζ(2) = ℼ2 / 6 = 1.644934… that appears very often in many sectors of string theory and Number Theory.
Thank You and best regards
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/On-the-Hypothetical-Dark-Matter-Candidate-New-with-Nardelli-Nardelli/4fad57b020b5ffb1c9990fba326a438368d76aab
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Further-Mathematical-Connections-Between-the-Dark-Nardelli-Nardelli/50c23911e187ed97e207d9bf7e5552d7a900235e
4 October, 2019 at 11:39 am
The Sum Of All Numbers Is -1/12? – This Month I Found Out
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun… […]
1 November, 2019 at 8:15 am
Anonymous
Very Nice!
19 March, 2020 at 10:40 am
About -1/12 – elkalamaras
[…] [10] Terrence Tao, The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic continuation, https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-fun… […]
27 March, 2020 at 6:41 pm
There is a lot of discussion in various online mathematical forums currently about the interpretation, derivation,… – mosqueeto
[…] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-func… […]
5 April, 2020 at 4:20 am
isaac mor
terry tap please check the png image attached
1. (-1) factprial is -1
2. there is no pole at zeta(1)
http://myzeta.125mb.com/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rrX3_Tx1hmbAcq3VzSMLC-uIXC5jDXQ-/view
thanks
28 July, 2020 at 11:39 pm
Sorpresas en las sumas infinitas (VIII) Revisitando 1+2+3+4+…=-1/12 (?) | Una vista circular
[…] se puede entender el resultado con un planteamiento elemental, que yo he aprendido de un magnifico post en el blog de Terence Tao, y que no he visto en ningún otro lugar. Esto es lo que quiero comentar hoy, para ir cerrando esta […]
11 August, 2020 at 8:51 am
Francois Oger
If you are interested to learn more about divergent series and want to understand why and how 1+2+3+4+5+6+… = -1/12, I recommend the following online course:
Introduction to Divergent Series of Integers
https://divergent.thinkific.com/courses/dsi-101
28 October, 2020 at 4:36 pm
fpmarin
Do you know an analytical continuation of the Euler Number $E_{n}$ ?. Thanks.
16 November, 2020 at 8:30 am
Patrick D'Anzi
I have difficulty understanding how to make this statement explicit (I don’t know complex analysis very well), what I did was use the Euler-Maclaurin formula:
\[ \int^n_m f(z)dz=\sum_{k=m}^nf(k)-\frac{f(n)-f(m)}{2}-\sum_{h=1}^{\lfloor p/2\rfloor}\frac{B_{2h}}{(2h)!}(f^{(2h-1)}(n)-f^{(2h-1)}(m))-R_p \]
where \(R_p=\mathcal{O}(\int_m^n |f^{(p)}(z)|dz) \).
let \( \alpha=\mathcal{Re}[s-B]$ and $g(z)=\zeta(z)\frac{N^{z-s}F(z-s)}{z-s}: \)
\[ \int^{\alpha+i \infty}_{\alpha-i \infty} g(z)dz=\sum_{k=-\infty}^{+ \infty}g(\alpha+i k)+\mathcal{O}(\int_{\alpha-i \infty}^{\alpha+i \infty} |g^{(p)}(z)|dz) \]
at this point I have doubts, I could change the integration line by choosing a \( \alpha \) that \( \forall k \) neglects \( g (\alpha + ik) \) but anyway I don’t know how to show that \( \mathcal {O} (\int_ {\alpha-i \infty} ^ {\alpha + i \infty} | g ^ {(p)} (z) | dz) = \mathcal {O} (N ^ {- B}) \)
31 January, 2021 at 11:28 am
Tom Copeland
To see the beauty of Ramanujan’s use of divergent series, as first recognized by Hardy, see my MathOverflow answer and the comments attached to it (https://mathoverflow.net/questions/79868/what-does-mellin-inversion-really-mean/79925#79925). Hardy was predisposed to see this (took him overnight though) since he basically advocated in one of his early papers what I call the Hardy heuristic “When in doubt, interchange operations” similar to Feynman’s “When in doubt, integrate by parts,” the basis to the theory of distributions. (Hardy later gave rigorous conditions under which Ramanujan’s Master Formula is valid.)
31 January, 2021 at 12:47 pm
Michele
Great Srinivasa Ramanujan! is my source of inspiration and was a genius, as Littlewood said, comparable to a Jacobi or an Euler
31 January, 2021 at 1:03 pm
Tom Copeland
Hardy rated himself a C mathematician compared to Ramanujan as an A. (That puts me off the alphabet. I don’t use the term genius– in some sense it marginalizes the passion, the diligence and dedication, even obsession, of the masters.)
12 February, 2021 at 9:38 am
246B, Notes 4: The Riemann zeta function and the prime number theorem | What's new
[…] has to be interpreted in a suitable non-classical sense in order for it to be rigorous (see this previous blog post for further […]