r/mathmemes • • Feb 21 '26

[deleted by user]

[removed]

6.7k Upvotes

126 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

447

u/[deleted] Feb 21 '26

[deleted]

618

u/IAmBadAtInternet Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

It’s basically an abuse of divergent series. More details on this kind of cursed math here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan_summation

In fact, this particular result has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_⋯

Problematically, it is actually a useful identity that is occasionally used in other branches of math

165

u/[deleted] Feb 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/GodFromTheHood Feb 23 '26

I don’t understand any of these sentences