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## New answers tagged big-list

0

Well there is a book "The Art and Craft Of Problem Solving" by Paul Zeitz. Its quite good, there is a section on Number theory and there is also a section on geometry. It will tell you of POP, etc. Wait! There is another book "Plane Euclidean Geometry: Theory and Problems" by A.D. Gardinier C.J. Bradley.

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I have a silly one, which is mine and even if it's not really correct, it's quite cute! Be: $\pi$ the famous constant we all know $\phi$ the golden ratio $\gamma$ = Euler-Mascheroni constant Thence $$e \approx \frac{\pi + \phi + \gamma}{\pi\phi\gamma -1}$$ Anyway, as I said it's not really correct because $$\frac{\pi + \phi + \gamma}{\pi\phi\gamma -1} ... 2 I would add to the list Dobiński's formula for the n^{\rm th} Bell's number (the number of partitions of an n-element set) which is given by$$B_n = {1 \over e}\sum_{k=0}^\infty \frac{k^n}{k!}.$$When I first saw this formula I was amazed by an appearance of e in a formula for a very concrete natural number. 2 What is the radius of convergence of the power series$$ f(x)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{n! x^n}{n^n}? Answer. Exactly \mathrm{e}. 2 In section 1.3 of Mathematical Constants by S.R. Finch we find this connection to prime number theory \begin{align*} \lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\left(\prod_{{p\leq n}\atop{p \text{ prime}}}p\right)^{\frac{1}{n}}=e \end{align*} and also some Wallis-like infinite products \begin{align*} e=&\frac{2}{1}\cdot\left(\frac{4}{3}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\cdot ... 1 e appears in the basic Stirling's approximation for the factorial.n!\approx\left(\frac ne\right)^n$$hence$$e\approx\frac n{\sqrt[n]{n!}}.$$2 Throw N balls into N bins at random. The probability that any given bin is empty is e^{-1}, and thus with high probability the fraction of empty bins is e^{-1}. 3 The arithmetic mean of the first N positive integers is about N/2. This is easy to justify without any computation. Less obviously, the geometric mean of the first N positive integers is about N/e. 3 The graph of$$y=x^x, x>0$$has minimum value$$y=\left(\frac 1e\right)^{\frac 1e}$$when x=\frac 1e 15 We have$$e=\lim_{n\to\infty}\sqrt[\large^n]{\text{LCM}[1,2,3,\ldots,n]},$$where LCM stands for least common multiple. 0 Probably and happily, this is an important one$$e^{tA}=1\!\!1+tA+\frac{1}{2!}t^2A^2+\cdots$$for a squared matrix A and each parameter t. 11 An almost magical appearance of e comes from Pascal's Triangle. Let s_n be the product of the terms on the n-th row of the Pascal's Triangle, that is:$$s_n=\prod_{k=0}^n\binom{n}{k}$$Then$$\lim_{n\to \infty}\frac{s_{n-1}s_{n+1}}{s_n^2}=e$$A proof of this fact can be found here. I think it's one of the things that struck me the most about ... 8 Here's a nice (longish) one. A sequence of numbers x_1,x_2,... is generated randomly from [0,1]. This process is continued so long as the sequence is monotonically increasing or monotonically decreasing. Q: What is the the expected length of the monotonic sequence? The probability that the length L of the monotonic sequence is greater than k is ... 4 Pick non-overlapping pairs (x,x+1) of integers from [1,n] until no more pairs can be picked (i.e., until no more consecutive integers remain), and let p be the number of integers that were picked (i.e. w is twice the number of picked intervals). Then you have for the expected value \mathbb{E}\ p of picked integers that$$ \lim_{n\to\infty} ...

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My favourite, also in the area of probability, is the secretary problem. Copied (with editing) from the Wikipedia site: The task is to hire the best of $n$ applicants for a position. The applicants are interviewed one by one in random order. A decision about each one must be made immediately after the interview. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be ...

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I don't know if this is relevant, but the fact that both $e$ and $\pi$ appear in the Gaussian function defining the normal distribution (which is very important in probability and in statistics) is something I find beautiful : $$f(x) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2π}}e^{-\frac{x^2}{2}}$$ Another example : $e$ appears in the definition of the moment-generating function ...

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$e$ finds itself in formulas involving $\pi$. Ramanujan's constant $$e^{\pi \sqrt{163}} = 262537412640768743.99999999999925\ldots \approx 640320^3+744$$ is related to Heegner numbers and has deep connections to number theory. The Gaussian integral $$\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} e^{-x^2}\,dx = \sqrt{\pi}$$ is related to polar coordinates and thus Euler's ...

2

You could look up some interesting topics such as Bernoulli trials, which use Euler's number to approximate probabilities involving large numbers, and Stirling's approximation which provides an approximation for factorials. I always liked the inequality rule that e is the only real number for which the following is true: $$\left(1+\frac{1}{x}\right)^x < ... 8 I kind of think this is cheating, but Euler's Identity comes to mind:$$e^{i\pi}+1=0$$This is a specific case of e^{ix}=\cos x+i\sin x when x=\pi. Deriving the formula requires only a knowledge of the Taylor expansions of e^x, \sin x, and \cos x. I suppose this is not particularly surprising, but it reveals a very deep connection between ... 22 e appears in the number of derangements The formula for the number of derangements of length n turns out to be$$n! \cdot \sum_{j=0}^n \frac{(-1)^j}{j!}$$Since the second part is just the standard series for e^{-1} this can also be written as$$\bigl[ \frac{n!}{e} \bigr]where [ . ] denotes the closest integer. This also implies that the ... 1 Here is Euler's Other Proof by Gerald Kimble \begin{align*} \frac{\pi^2}{6}&=\frac{4}{3}\frac{(\arcsin 1)^2}{2}\\ &=\frac{4}{3}\int_0^1\frac{\arcsin x}{\sqrt{1-x^2}}\,dx\\ &=\frac{4}{3}\int_0^1\frac{x+\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{(2n-1)!!}{(2n)!!}\frac{x^{2n+1}}{2n+1}}{\sqrt{1-x^2}}\,dx\\ &=\frac{4}{3}\int_0^1\frac{x}{\sqrt{1-x^2}}\,dx ... 1 I've got quite a few:f(x)=\frac{1}{2}e^{-|x|}f(x)=\frac{1}{\sqrt \pi} e^{{-x}^2}$$And on and on. The point I am trying to prove it that any function \phi such that$$\int_{-\infty}^\infty \phi(x)=B \text{ s.t. }B\in\Bbb{R}$$Can give yet another solution to your integral:$$f(x)=\frac{1}{B}\phi(x)$$4 Not really. Trigonometry in its limited, familiar form is not an area of active research. You will however find trigonometry all over various different fields of mathematical research which are active, just masked under different names and forms. At this point it is mostly applications or generalizations of what you and I would call trigonometry. ... 1 For a few examples in recent TCS (Theory of Computer Science): http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.0837 (STOC 2012) http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.2369 (STOC 2014) and a blog post about these. This is more about negative results -- i.e., trying to rule out approaches that would show \sf P=NP, by (roughly speaking) proving that any linear programming formulation of ... 1 You cannot say it is dead. Much of algorithm are available in software package. You might conisder there is no new breakrthough in theory or algorithms. 0 The following condition is equivalent to Sorli's conjecture: (a) \sigma(n^2)/q \mid \left(2n^2 - \sigma(n^2)\right) \Longleftrightarrow \sigma(n^2)/q \mid n^2 (b) MSE question: If N={q^k}{n^2} is an odd perfect number given in Eulerian form, does \sigma(n^2)/q divide 2n^2 - \sigma(n^2)? 2 All such functions can be written in the form$$f(z) = \exp(g(z))$$where g is holomorphic. Such functions certainly satisfy your condition, and the fact that all such functions can be written in this form follows from the existence of the logarithm of non-zero functions. 2 Closed-form solutions are the exception rather than the rule. They are droplets in an ocean of intractable computations. In the frame of algebra/calculus, we have Linear equations and systems of equations: yes, always (fortunately). Algebraic equations and systems of equations: no (with a few exceptions, like second, third and fourth degree). ... 3 The definition of a closed form solution, in particular what people agree to call an 'elementary' function, is culturally determined. A certain solution to a problem might be expressed as a series, or an integral, or some other limit, until its frequent use makes it worthwile having a standard name. That is how natural logarithms became accepted as ... 0 I remember being fascinated by amicable numbers, the subject of my junior high science fair project in the early 1970's. I was using a huge book of factorization tables that I couldn't check out from the public library. I spent hours trying to plug prime numbers in the formulas given by Euler and Erdos. DEFINITION: A pair of numbers x and y is called ... 0 (a) \sigma(N/q^k)/q^k is a square. (b) K. A. Broughan, D. Delbourgo, and Q. Zhou, Improving the Chen and Chen result for odd perfect numbers, Integers 13 (2013), A39 0 (a) n < q (b) J. A. B. Dris, The abundancy index of divisors of odd perfect numbers, JIS, Vol. 15 (2012), Article 12.4.4, Published electronically on September 3 2012 (see Lemma 15 in page 6) 0 (a) rad(N) > \sqrt{N} (b) P. Ochem and M. Rao, Another remark on the radical of an odd perfect number, Fibonacci Quart. 52 (2014), no. 3, 215–217 0 One of the biggest awes I experienced was when I could fully understand how you could prove that addition and multiplication of real numbers was commutative: trying to understand this it made me go to the basic construction of the Naturals, Integers, Rationals, and finally the reals (via the dedekind cuts approach). I just thought that journey was lovely. 0 Personally, I thought math was beautiful on a number of occasions:$$1x+2x=3x1zebra+2zebras=3zebrasApplying words can really help young children understand mathematics better. Another time I found mathematics beautiful was when I learned that almost all functions have a writable inverse, written using Lagrange's Inversion Theorem. Another cool ... 1 Lawvere and Schanuel, Conceptual Mathematics: A first introduction to categories has many such passages, reflecting the classroom atmosphere from when the material was first taught. 1 I know I'm a bit late, but I recently came across the lovely book Treks into Intuitive Geometry, which consists of a series of conversations between Gen and Kyu, as can be seen in the image below. The whole book appears to be written in this format. 6 I am not sure if the result is "most wanted", but we disproved a well-known conjecture of John Milnor, that every connected solvable Lie group admits a left-invariant affine structure, by a very hard computation concerning a refinement of Ado's theorem for Lie algebras. We proved the following result, yielding a counterexample to Milnor's conjecture: ... 1 Perhaps you're looking for something like this. In elementary probability/statistics courses one deals with random variables that are either "discrete" or "continuous". The discrete ones have countably many possible values with positive probabilities; the continuous ones have a density (piecewise continuous in all examples, but easily generalized to ... 0 I'm too an student that you have mentioned who lacked intuition for mathematics in school and came aware after I reached college that the maths I learned was maths to pass an exam but not more than that.So I'm ready to help you as I can. I'm also in a run to get into the intuitive world of Mathematics but don't know when will I complete the race. Here are ... 4 A Lagrange point relative to the positions of two massive objects is a third point with the property that a small object moving under the gravitational influence of the others remains in relative equilibrium. The following image (taken from Wikipedia and licensed under CC) shows the five Lagrange points in a Sun-Earth like system, together with contours of ... 1 Although you can witness complex (or chaotic) behavior via a simulation with some of the bodies fixed, it usually pays to run a complete numeric solution to the general problem, since any non-fixed bodies can always run chaotically fairly easily. If, on the other hand, you wish to fix some of the bodies, you can tweak the general solution by giving them ... 1 False belief: A simple arc in the plane (i.e., a subset of the plane which is homeomorphic to the interval [0,1]) has planar Lebesgue measure zero. 1 True and crazy: There exists a subset E of [0,1]^2 which meets every line (horizontal, vertical, or slanted) along a measure zero subset of that line, in fact, along at most two points (i.e., no three points of E are ever aligned), yet such that E does not have measure zero, in fact, E meets every closed set of positive measure in [0,1]^2. Also, ... 3 I am fond of fallacies where a property of members of set of things, and the properties of the limit of that set, are assumed to be equal. But the limit need not be a member of the set, and therefore need have nothing in common with members of the set. For example, imagine a collection of line segments that goes straight up one unit and straight right one ... 4 1 = 0? Given the progression a_n=(-1)^n, the sum s_n=\sum_{i=1}^\infty a_i can be built in two ways, all terms in parentheses are zero.s_n=\sum_{i=1}^\infty a_i=(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+...=0s_n=\sum_{i=1}^\infty a_i=1+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+...=1$$Therefore, s_n=1=0. 7 I have an answer to this question! Proposition: Every positive number can be described in less than 15 English words. Note: I don't necessarily mean the spelling expansion of its form like 256 as "two hundred and fifty-six" but also as the more economical "sixteen squared". Base Step: 1 can be written in less than fifteen English words. Hypothesis: ... 9 You might want to look at Edward J. Barbeau's books "Mathematical Fallacies, Flaws, and Flimflam" (MAA, 2000) and "More Fallacies, Flaws and Flimflam" (MAA, 2013). 5$$S=1+2+4+8+\cdots2S=2+4+8+16+\cdots$$Subtracting like this:$$S-2S=(1+2+4+8+\cdots)-(0+2+4+8+\cdots)=(1-0)+(2-2)+(4-4)+\cdots=1S=-1$$14 I like the following one. It's kinda silly, but still interesting. We know 1\=100c. But then:$$\begin{align}1\$&=100c\\ &=10c\times 10c\\ &=0.1\$\times 0.1\$\\ &=0.01\$\\ &=1c\end{align} So a dollar is worth just a penny!

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