Tuesday, January 21, 2014

21 - Fuzzy Math

2 = 1?
Coworker tripped me up with this one, see if you can spot the fallacy.
For another math puzzle see "365 Project: 38 - Unbalanced Square Root (2-7)".


Evaluating Diverging Series?
Then he went on further to show proofs that these diverging series evaluate.
I thought he was playing tricks again, but sure enough, the proofs are listed in the math communities.
My mind has been blown. I may never sleep right again at night.

Answer: just in case you didn't spot the fallacy, (a - b) = 0, so the cancellation would be dividing both sides by zero.

2 comments:

Ryan said...

(a-b) = 0

So you can't "divide both sides" by (a-b) and have it work - you are dividing by zero

Sneak Meeples said...

You got it :-)