Subject: Re: Ancient divergent series
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 15:08:58 -0400
From: Alex Bogomolny
This is a divergent series which has no sum. Some great people thought the sum was 1/2 (from S = 1 - S) but by the same token it could be declared 0 or 1. A history book is right to mention this phenomenon lest people think that mathematics is cast in stone. The notion of convergency/divergency was conceived as late as the second half of the 19th century. Since then it became clear that no value may be assigned to divergent series.