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00:01
@secret By contradiction, suppose $\pi = \frac{a}{b}$ for some $a,b \in \mathbb{Z}$. (i.e. that $\pi$ is rational. We seek a contradiction.

Recall that $\sum a_n < \infty \implies a_n \to 0\text { as }n \to \infty$, and that $$e^x = \sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{x^n}{n!}$$ converges for all x.

So $$e^{\pi a} = \sum_{n=0}^\infty\frac{(\pi a)^n}{n!} < \infty \implies \frac{(\pi a)^n}{n!} \to 0 \text{ as }n \to \infty$$ Thus we can choose an $n \in \mathbb{N}$ sufficiently large such that $$\frac{(\pi a)^n}{n!} < 1/\pi \implies \pi \, \frac{(\pi a)^n}{n!} < 1$$
 
5 hours later…
04:32
@Secret Let me know when you want the whole thing actually. I have it typed up now but need to make sure it doesn't disappear while you are away
 
4 hours later…
08:40
@user525966 The system I gave you is minimal in the sense that if you take out any rule it will be unable to prove some tautologies. ProofMood's variant for propositional logic would be minimal if you take out either ¬-Elim or ( both ⊥-Elim and LEM ).
The full system here for (many-sorted) first-order logic, specifically all the labelled rules listed under "Boolean operations" and "Quantifiers", is minimal in the same sense. ProofMood's system for (ordinary) first-order logic, on the other hand, is extremely non-minimal.
Non-minimality is frequently desirable in practice, because appropriate redundancy can greatly facilitate understanding and even greatly shorten proofs. For example, in my post I explicitly mentioned that one can have variable-renaming rules, which are redundant but can greatly shorten a proof, not to say make the core logical reasoning clear. After all, nobody wants to read a portion of a proof whose sole purpose is to prove the same thing but just with different variable names!
So it is not a surprise that ProofMood's system is quite far from minimality.
A balance must be sought for, though. A system for first-order logic with a thousand rules would be quite ridiculous and harder to use unless you already knew (in your head) a sufficiently simple system! It is just like playing a game; if it has 1000 rules and you do not know which 980 of them are redundant, it would take you a very long time to figure out how to play according to the rules.
Similarly, I can review ProofMood's system (and other ND systems) the way I am doing now, basically because I already understand a minimal system that I can compare it to. This is one key advantage of knowing at least one minimal system, even if one normally uses an extended system with extra rules for pragmatic convenience.
And I should say that it is usually easy to prove non-minimality of a given system's rules, because all one has to do is to show that at least one rule is redundant, namely to show how to convert any proof in the system into a proof that does not use that rule. In contrast, it is usually hard to prove minimality of a given system's rules, because one would have to use ad-hoc methods for each rule to show that there is some tautology that cannot be proven without that rule.
10:02
@Secret After this one, if you want another cool number theory proof I would highly recommend erdos' proof of Bertrand's postulate. Super slick.
@user21820 hello there
Hello!
forgot you're on the other side of the globe
Haha..
I made the mistake of taking a stimulant a little too late ;)
How do you know I'm not right behind you? =P
10:03
haha
Did you look?
=D
Anyway, how are things?
how are things these days? You wrapping up on your data structures paper?
haha
not bad...im in RI taking care of my 84 yr old grandmother
occupies most of my time
I've also got a lawsuit against the state of Arizona that's going to be increasingly difficult to keep up with
Other than that its mainly MCAT review
I'm fine as usual. Hmm I suppose all lawsuits are a bother.
It seems most of them are good only for the rich.
First two motions, although sort of trivial, were granted, which was pretty exciting
I'm asking about $75,000
I spent 100's of hours pouring through legal texts preparing for it
How much longer do you expect till you'll be Dr. user28210
FYI if you followed that big controversy with Donald Trump pardoning some Sheriff in the US...that is the defendant in this case.
@DavidReed 1 to 2 years perhaps.
@DavidReed Nope I haven't been following.
By the way, should we move this to another chat-room?
10:19
@user21820 Ah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio

Anyways, you seem to be busy. I mainly just stopped in to ping secret. Actually need to get back to work myself. Till next time!
Trash is fine
@DavidReed I see thanks for the link.
 
3 hours later…
12:50
ok, but it is a lot less transparent compared to the e is irrational proof on what motivates us a lot of things for example:
1. The proof by contradiction obviously want to take advantage of the behaviour of $\pi$ under sine, which is why it is seeking to use $\int f(x) \sin x dx$ in one of its steps
2. Why are we choosing the nth term of $e^{\pi a}$ to establish that bound of less than one?
3. How actually is $f(x)$ motivated other than it will bring the result within [0,1] to trigger the contradiction?
Overall, there is one thing I don't understand about these more advanced irrationality proofs. Why are we looking at the nth term of an expansion and seek for a contradiction that way. Or more precisely, why the fact that these numbers are irrational will trigger the contradiction and hence motivate us to prove by contradiciton that way
Another way to ask this question is. Since I am still very terrible at dealing with negative abstractions (objects of the form there does not exist X such that P(X) is true), if this proof is straightened into a direct proof, what property between rationals and irrationals lead to the conclusions. Is it that they cannot die off fast enough in their nth term approximation, or other things?
I think usually I will be confused alot even if a proof is logically consistent when I don't understand how does a proof came to be. I am not sure if that is semantics or metalogic, but usually I will need to understand this in order to understand the proofs themselves
and usually, proof by contradiction has a lot of these auxillary elements in it that I have no idea where they came from or what reason motivates them
13:32
@Secret I think you realize by now that advanced mathematics is often ad-hoc. Proofs of irrationality are by definition proofs that the quantity in question is not rational. So it is unsurprising if they not only are not constructive but also do not seem to tell you anything more than the irrationality of that number.
@secret hello there sir
Sometimes in math people come across things by accident
Euler discovered the gamma function by playing around with something completely unrelated, and through the most obscure and irrational substitutions and manipulations
I can't tell you what motivates the function $f(x)$ in Niven's proof
820 is correct in that the only feasible way to prove something is irrational is to show that it is not rational
Proof's by contradiction form the foundation of virtually every proof like this that I am aware
Sometimes you just have to settle with proving the result, and leave the discoverer's mindset to mystery
But it will be nicer if we can understand what aspect of irrationality we are exploiting in these proofs, otherwise I don't see how we can get very far in irrational numbers without fully understanding the entity we tried to prove outselves
You've proven that $\pi$ cannot be expressed as a fraction of integers
that is a worthwhile result
True, but it is still deeply unsatisfying on how the inability to express as fraction of integers will trigger the contradiction. Usually in proofs, even highly nonconstructive ones, if I understand what and how the contradiction is triggered, it is more fruitful than just knowing the result of the proof
sorry I forgot it doesn't show you that I'm still typing :)
One moment
13:43
For example, proofs of vitali sets basically exploits that these sets are not invariant under rotations and translation symmetry. That's a much cooler property than simply showing something exists
(I am typing too lol_
Yes. So thus far we have not even finished the proof
which arguably contributes to you being confused about it
but the contradiction is effectively as follows:
Assume that pi is rational. Show that this implies that there exists an integer in the interval $(0,1)$. Note that this is not possible
There are a variety of ways to rigorously make that a statement of the form $A \land \neg A$
Let me know if and when you would like me to post it step by step and we can go through it together
I think we might need to get through it step by step. It is not immediately obvious what does irrationality has anything to do with where an interger lies in
It doesn't
The idea to focus on is that the assumption of rationality necessarily implies something impossible
and so can't be true
@Secret If you read the proof David sketched, it relies on the fact that a certain integral involving a,b is an integer if a,b are integers, and the other properties of that integral rely on π = a/b.
@secret Here lets go into your lab and I'll post it piece by piece
13:57
21820: that is one specific integral that so far seemed to pop out from nowhere other than by accident, thus I felt so disconnected by the flow
David: Sure, let's go there
@Secret I can't tell you what was going on in the head of the first one who discovered that integral, but it's reasonably simple that it would be eventually discovered. Also, the more advanced the mathematics the more ad-hoc the objects constructed. If you take a look at olympiad problems, you will wonder at the incredible way in which some solutions seem to fall out from thin air.
Equally incredible is that some olympiad participants can find those same solutions or alternative but equally ad-hoc solutions without having seen such problems before.
yeah, I still yet to understand the magic of number theory
@Secret For a simple example, consider the proof of Fermat's little theorem, namely x^(p−1) ≡ 1 (mod p) for any prime p and integer x such that gcd(x,p) = 1, by considering the product of { x·k : k∈[1..p−1] } mod p, and proving that this set is identical to [1..p−1] mod p, and so the extra factor of x^(p−1) must be 1 mod p.
a lot of interesting results appear to come from intuition and experimentation rather than any kind of obvious, gradual progression
come up with the cool result first, prove/ask questions later kind of deal
How is one supposed to think of that product? I don't know; I saw that trick somewhere so I never found it myself. But after you see that trick it is not so hard to extend that trick to prove Euler's phi theorem, namely x^φ(n) ≡ 1 (mod n) for any positive integer n and integer x such that gcd(x,n) = 1.
@Secret: If you try it, you may run into some issues that have to be solved that don't show up in the prime case, but at least there is no 'trickery' to extract out of thin air.
14:14
Hmm... the product seems like a brute force approach in that since we want to show $x^{p-1} \equiv 1 \mod p$ we might as well try all possible products in mod p and showing that this reduces to [1...p-1] mod p which then the conclusion 1 mod p quickly follows
not sure if I understood correctly
Secret you should have had some exposure to group theory when taking physical chem
The above is automatic from lagrange's theorem
@Secret You need to work it out properly then you will know what is going on. Anyway my point is that it is ad-hoc. I don't think you would think of the product of { x·k : k∈[1..p−1] } very easily, if at all, if you have never seen this trick before.
right
But like Niven's proof, this construction has a low enough complexity that eventually someone will try it and find that, hey it gives a nice proof.
So I can't even tell you whether it was an accidentally found proof or not!
@DavidReed Going via Lagrange's theorem is a rather distinct route, arguably very different in algebraic structure, than this particular proof.
I did not realize you were choosing a proof to demonstrate a more general idea
14:22
Good day fellow logicians, anyone here that is familiar with prolog?
I don't think lagrange theorem will be taught in point group chemistry. We only need to know basic group operations and character tables, we don't even need to know what is a subgroup
This article collects together a variety of proofs of Fermat's little theorem, which states that a p ≡ a ( mod p ) {\displaystyle a^{p}\equiv a{\pmod {p}}} for every prime number p and every integer a (see modular arithmetic). == Simplifications == Some of the proofs of Fermat's little theorem given below depend on two simplifications. The first is that we may assume that a is in the range 0 ≤ a ≤ p − 1. This...
the main "trick" is realizing that the sequence a, 2a, 3a, ..., p-1 all taken mod p gives you a rearrangement of 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., (p-1), so you end up with factorials on both sides of the congruence that you can cancel out, which gives you a^(p-1) = 1 mod p
@DavidReed Yea I was. The interesting thing is that if you investigate group theory first, then you may chance upon the Lagrange theorem way before the approach I sketched above. Yet the core algebraic structure underlying Euler's phi theorem is the fact that gcd(x,n) implies existence of multiplicative inverse of x mod n, and so every proof appears to pass through that bottleneck. In particular the Lagrange theorem one seems (from this viewpoint) to have lots of unnecessary obscuring frills.
@user525966 Interesting; Fermat had the theorem in 1640, and that article seems to suggest that the first known exposition of the proof I sketched was in 1806. That's quite long for a 'simple enough' ad-hoc construction. =)
I wonder whether the related proof for Euler's theorem appeared relatively quick after that, which would support the view that it is the same 'trick'.
(Random explosive generalisation pondering to be dealt with another day: I wonder if there is a field of mathematics that tries to quantify how fast, how often and what pattern proofs in a given field of mathematics emrges, and thus forming a network of interconnecting proof ideas that feeds into many proofs)
The section mentioning applying the trick to Euler's theorem doesn't mention when it was discovered haha..
@Secret Lol... A lot of it is luck.
14:33
@user21820 The motivation for abstract algebra is effectively that. Mathematicans discovered they were effectively proving the exact same thing over and over.
Unrelated thing about myself: I am not a very spiritual person because I am that kind of person who will refuse to use a given magic if I don't fully understood it
If someone tells me to believe in a religion, I will give them a huge pile of question marks
I believe a scientist is necessarily an agnostic
@DavidReed For algebra, yes. But I think there is hardly any correlation between the patterns that we know of today and how fast something is found. Some theorems or proofs just escape all the mathematicians for a long time.
That was actually the motivation for topology as well come to think of it
I am indeed an agnostic (I used to be atheist back in 2011)
14:37
i can't find anywhere talking about how euler discovered his theorem
I won't satisfy with something that is not explained, unless it is provably unexplainable like actual magic
Partly also because mathematicians are not math-machines, no matter how close the two phrases sound, so they try things more according to their interests or fancy, and not like a breadth-first-search of proofs.
most atheists are agnostic
@user525966 there are 50 million "Euler's theorems"
As 820 knew about me some days earlier, I strongly believe in operationalism
14:38
Are you referring to the one involving, e,i,pi,0 and 1
In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences, and physics, operationalization is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its existence is indicated by other phenomena. Operationalization is thus the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable in terms of empirical observations. In a wider sense, it refers to the process of specifying the extension of a concept—describing what is and is not an instance of that concept. For example, in medicine, the...
no that's euler's formula
Oh you're talking about the group of units mod n
that is, anything, however confusing, will be characterised when we record how it interact with other things enough
euler's theorm is a^phi(n) = 1 mod n
14:38
and that's what I used to understand infinite sets
Euler's opera omnia is published
This obviously failed for indefinable reals however
You should be able to find his original publication of it translated to english
although there does seem to be another "euler's formula" in graph theory, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planar_graph#Euler's_formula
14:40
holy
that guy must have been pretty busy
In music theory and tuning, an Euler–Fokker genus (plural: genera), named after Leonhard Euler and Adriaan Fokker, is a musical scale in just intonation whose pitches can be expressed as products of some of the members of some multiset of generating prime factors. Powers of two are usually ignored, because of the way the human ear perceives octaves. An x-dimensional tone-dimension contains x factors. "An Euler-Fokker genus with two dimensions may be represented in a two-dimensional (rectangular) tone-grid, one with three dimensions in a three-dimensional (block-shaped) tone-lattice. Euler-Fokker...
lol
@user525966 He was, even after he lost his eye-sight.
I believe he was the second most prolific mathematician of all time
First if you restrict his publications to original research
who was the first?
erdos I think
14:42
Leonhard Euler ( OY-lər; German: [ˈɔɪlər] ( listen); 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician and engineer, who made important and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics, such as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory, while also making pioneering contributions to several branches such as topology and analytic number theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics...
hilbert? erdos? gauss?
i know terrence tao considered hilbert a jack of all trades
"Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed"
@user525966 Lol, please note that Numberphile is full of nonsense.
what do you mean
14:45
Not that this particular bits are nonsense, but it's too much nonsense that I actually recommend against it.
It's hard for non-mathematicians to tell which bits are nonsense.
what's an example of nonsense
the famous -1/12
the -1/12 stuff i consider nonsense if that's what you are referring to
Yup that is one.
Some parts of their videos about infinity are also rubbish.
It's unbelievable how many non-mathematicians actually buy that kind of rubbish.
But I suppose more people on Math SE know better.
it reminds me of those divide by zero proofs that show 1=2 except this time the -1/12 idea is given some credibility because it happens to show up in some string theory framework
(which imo would suggest the string theory framework is flawed but I don't know anything about it to suggest how)
14:48
blame the physicists for 1/137 and -1/12 to be made weird and arbitrary connerctions
@user525966 Even if it does show up in string theory, which anyway is not even science, it is no better than saying that 1/(1−x) = 1+x+x^2+... and hence 1/2 = 1−1+1−1+...
The flaw is obvious to anyone who knows basic real analysis; the first identity only applies for |x|<1, and if you apply it to other things like cows you will get nonsense.
how are you getting grandi's series out of that
@user525966 x = −1.
doesn't 1/(1-x) mean every exponent is 1^n?
$$\frac{1}{1-@cows} = \text{Spherical cow nonsense that constantly multiplies}$$
14:50
i think that would be 1/(1+x) would it not?
If you treat the first identity as true for x = −1, you get what I wrote, but of course it is meaningless for x = −1.
Substitute and see.
@user525966 1/2=1/(1-(-1))"=" 1−1+1−1+...
@Holo Ooh hello there!
p = 1 + x + x^2 + x^3 + ...
xp = x + x^2 + x^3 + x^4 + ...
p - xp = 1
p(1-x) = 1
p = 1/(1-x)
@user21820 Yo!
@user21820 I couldn't write down what you told me yet because real life is a bitch but I hope to get to there soon
@user525966 this is assuming p exists, which it does only if |x|<1
14:52
@user525966 Wait, be careful. You should explicitly state that x is a real or complex number and |x|<1, otherwise your very first line is meaningless. And that is the key; you can only define p to be that infinite series after you have proven that the series converges.
yeah I get the |x|<1 part
So basically anyone who is abusing the identity is ignoring the necessary condition of |x|<1 for the identity to be even meaningful.
And that is why Numberphile is not a good source to learn mathematics from.
oh i made a mental math error
ok with you now
do I introduce the notion of series via recursion theorem?
@Holo Sure sure; by the way I bookmarked that discussion in case you want a permalink to refer to (and also so that I can unpin from the star board haha):

Veblen Ordinals (Part 1)

Sep 29 at 8:45, 2 hours 2 minutes total – 152 messages, 3 users, 1 star

Bookmarked yesterday by user21820

14:54
you get 1/2 = 1-1+1-1+... if x = -1 which fails the condition that |x|<1
@user525966 Right.
@famesyasd You need the sequence of partial sums, so yes!
i don't think it makes sense to assign a finite value to something that doesn't converge to anything
kind of a paradox
Even the video of Numberphile that does makes sense they don't explain why it make sense
do I need a strong version for this?
or mine where F : A -> A and a in A
@user525966 Tell that to those people who don't know any real analysis but want to believe that 1+2+3+... is negative...
14:56
@user21820 Haha, already put a star on this so I can get the permalink any time I want :-)
@famesyasd Just that will do, because we are dealing with reals, not funny complicated sets. We only need to define an f∈func(nat,real) for the terms, and a g∈func(nat,real) for the partial sums, and we can do all that with the simple recursion theorem.
@Holo I have the power to unstar it haha..
also 0:43
@user21820 No(oooooooooooooo)!!!
Anyway, I'll be away. Feel free to carry on!
14:59
Bye @user21820
@user525966 this is not standard analysis
16:00
32
A: Why is this definition of convergence incorrect?

user21820I am not sure why the other current answers are interpreting your second definition as invalid, because as a native English speaker I interpret it to mean exactly the same (logically speaking) as the first definition. In particular, you did not switch the quantifiers, even though the surface text...

This is why we should speak using only logic quantifier
@Holo $\forall \exists \exists \forall \exists \forall \forall \forall \exists$
$\exists\!\!\!\forall$!!!!
$\forall^{\exists}$
16:30
@Holo Ultimately, yes. But even for logicians it can be hard to always keep the entire string of quantifiers in mind. That's why we devise definitions to condense pieces of it.
@user21820 Yes, but the english language is not made of definitions using quantifier
And it turns out that we don't need the ε-δ style of definition for real analysis. There is an alternative approach that is equivalent but has much fewer quantifiers, though it is not often taught (although Knuth has been a well-known proponent of a similar approach):
7
A: When is the derivative of an inverse function equal to the reciprocal of the derivative?

user21820The answers so far are arguably incorrect; they merely give sufficient but not necessary conditions, and one of them even states that their conditions are necessary. We do not need differentiability in some (open) neighbourhood of the point, even for the conventional (very restrictive) definition...

The reason for the disparity is that the alternative approach is in the 'forward' direction (from δ to ε) and retains more information (the asymptotic behaviour) and hence one can easily manipulate it as needed. In contrast, the conventional definition (from ε to δ) is backward and only works when the limit exists, hence direct proofs are less re-usable.
@user21820 what other definition, in the linked answer he uses the $\frac{\Delta y}{\Delta x}$ but this is essentially the same no?
16:48
@Holo It's not really the same. In that framework you have literally variables that vary with a parameter, which of course you can capture in a first-order foundation via either sequences or functions. If we go with the function approach, for variables x,y varying with real parameter t, the notation "dy/dx" would effectively be defined as the partial-function r such that y(t+δ)/x(t+δ) ≈ r(t) as δ → 0. The quantification over ε has been 'factored out' of the symbolism, as in the intuition.
In particular, what we often have is the context "δ → 0", within which we can perform ordinary reasoning and make some additional assertions such as "δ ≠ 0" and "δ ≈ 0", and hence obtain other assertions, which we can then pull out from that context to obtain statements about limits and derivatives.
@Holo: Perhaps it would be easier to look at some examples of how this framework has much lower quantifier-depth than the conventional approach (even with limit theorems). I have some under "Asymptotic expansions" on my profile. In particular the last example links to a gigantic one:
6
A: Limit with a big exponentiation tower

user21820Here is a very simple way using only the asymptotic expansion $e^t \in 1+t+Θ(t^2)$ as $t \to 0$ As $x \to \infty$:   $\Large e^{e^{e^{x+e^{−\big(a+x+e^x+e^{e^x}\big)}}}}−e^{e^{e^x}}$   $\Large = e^{e^{e^xe^y}} − e^{e^{e^x}}$ where $\large y = e^{−e^{e^x}-e^x-x-a} \in o(1)$   $\Large \in e^{e^...

@user21820 I will look at the example
17:04
@Holo: Will be off again. See you!
See you later
 
4 hours later…
20:58
Its more of a corollary to Lagrange's Theorem. For any finite group $g^{|G|} = e$. You DO actually need basic results from modular arithmetic to get this result but they form the basis for the analysis of any finite group.

In particular you need $g^{n_1}=g^{n_2} \iff n_1 = n_2 \mod |g|$. This gives $g^n = e \iff n \big| |g|$. Its then automatic from the fact that the order of the subgroup generated by an element is equal to the order of the element and the fact that the order of any subgroup divides the order of the group (lagrange).
I do agree though that there is value in learning the old-fashioned way.
Actually I've frequently found in mathematics that I'll spend a whole page proving a result only to develop the machinery a few semesters later to prove it in a single sentence.
$|g| \bigg| n$*

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