3 ms·
As a non-math person I didn’t understand anything, but I enjoyed reading just for the enthusiasm of the author.
by hk__2 4y ago
As a non-math person I didn’t understand anything, but I enjoyed reading just for the enthusiasm of the author.
- pipingdog 4y agoIf you want to get a flavor of the article without being too much of a math person, you can watch the 3Blue1Brown video linked in the article, which captures a similar surprise that for certain values a formula maps exactly to a "round" quantity, then starts to diverge after a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=851U557j6HE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=851U557j6HE
- schlauerfox 4y agoMy ignorant intuition is since it's the area between sin(x)/x and the x axis, but as you get further into infinity the 1/x still keeps getting smaller slowly but sin(x) always is the same magnitude, the integral gets slightly further away the closer you get to infinity and that slight difference adds up?
- hgsgm 4y agoYes but the question is why the value is exact for small N.
- kragen 4y agothat borwein integral formula is one of the first things baez mentions