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[mathjax]In an earlier post, I argued that the definition of factorial (\(n!\)) is the number of ways that a number of n distinct objects can be arranged. I have recently been told that, no, the formal definition of factorial is as generally offered by sources such as Wolfram and Numberphile: The product of all integers from…
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[mathjax]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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…