News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The State of the Tau. Parent comment

Re:The State of the Tau by gizmo686 on Friday June 28, 2013 @07:48PM (#5960933)
If you re-arrange the terms, you can find that that series equals tau/4.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The State of the Tau by Retric on Friday June 28, 2013 @09:07PM (#5961152)
No, no you can't it's tau/8.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The State of the Tau by gizmo686 on Friday June 28, 2013 @09:15PM (#5961176)
Its a conditionally convergent series; you can re-arrange the terms to add up to any real number you like (or diverge). [1].

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_convergence

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The State of the Tau by Retric on Saturday June 29, 2013 @07:02AM (#5962039)
You can construct a new series such that every term in the old one is there. However, if you try and rearrange the terms you end up with a backlog that coverages to the difference between the series. Which is why the actual series converges in the first place.
[ Parent | on HN ]