[stargroup100]

-.-

Originally Posted by Zapmeister

by analytic continuation any series that has a rule for the terms can be "summed" by taking a power series or (in your case here) a dirichlet series and extending it outside its radius of convergence.

if you learn this fact first then maybe it's not so fascinating. someone that doesn't know this could be fascinated by the fact that that sum can be justified.

when I first learned about calculus, the idea that you can find the area under any polynomial curve in trivial time was mindblowing to me. now I take it for granted because I'm so familiar with basic integrals, but that didn't make it any less surprising when I first learned about it

Originally Posted by Zapmeister

if it's about the applications of the actual value -1/12 then why bother with writing it out like that instead of writing it as zeta(-1) and using properties of the zeta function.

because a layman wouldn't understand anything about the zeta function unless you used layman terms.

Originally Posted by jaz_pup

stuff

ah I misunderstood you. my bad.