There’s a Numberphile video that’s hurting people’s brains. It claims to prove (several ways, including in a companion video) that \[\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} n = -\frac{1}{12}\] This is, of course, highly counterintuitive. The video itself is misleading in that the speakers refer to the sum of all natural numbers, when this is not in fact the sum…
Author: Clio
January 8
A day late, but not quite a dollar short: That was the story of his life, it seemed. Running behind but still somehow managing to eke out just enough to be considered a success. Or, at least, not a failure. He didn’t know how many times he’d been here before, sitting on the edge of…
January 7
There was a little girl who thought she’d challenge the world to change, to become the way she wanted it to be. She had grown tired of the angry way it had decided to march onward, day after day, and decided that it needed to learn to walk backwards, or at least sideways. She told…
January 6
once, when i was glass and the morning sun was still high in the sky i could see the rainbows shimmering through my skin the road was long in front of me but i looked forward to the walk once, when i was steel and the noontime clouds crept and dawdled i could see the…
January 5
On the fifth day at sea, I was set adrift in a rowboat and left to my own devices. In the boat, I had an oar, rations for three days, and an umbrella. There was no cell phone, which was just as well, because I was out of reach of any towers anyway. There was…
January 4
There is solace in silence Quiet that seeps in from the shadows Sleek as a cat, padding softly across tiles There is solace in silence Snowflake settling on autumn leaves Swirled by chilling winds There is solace in silence But at the same time, Not — ptkh 010414
January 3
You were the Buddha. That’s what you’d told us when you’d gone to China and the children had gathered around you, this towering behemoth of a man with a round belly and an expansive smile. When you were lying there, flat, stomach distended from post mortem gasses, I tried to be sad at your loss….
January 2
There is a paper wasp nest dangling from a tree on our easement, high above the street. It is easily the size of a human head, even desiccated as it is from winter months of disuse. Back in autumn, after the leaves had fallen and made the nest visible to anyone who walked by, I…
January 1
At some point, walking along the snow-flocked train tracks in the winter evening’s half-light, I became aware. By this I mean: All that I was was now. I had no past to dwell within, chiding myself, steeped in regrets. I had no future lingering in the wings like a Dickens villain, ready to set me…
Probabilities: Consecutive numbers
On a mathematics community on Google+, Michal Nalevanko asked the question (paraphrased here, including my assumptions): Let us say there is a lottery game in which twenty numbered balls are pulled from a pool of eighty. What is the probability that three or more numbers will be consecutive? It is assumed that the numbers are…