Monthly Archives: March 2017

Post without words #13

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Brent
Posted in pattern, pictures, posts without words | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Sigma notation ninja tricks 2: splitting sums

Posted on March 18, 2017 by Brent

[Previous posts in this series: jumping constants] Trick 2: splitting sums I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth spelling it out for completeness’ sake. If you have a sum of something which is itself a sum, like this: you … Continue reading →

Posted in algebra, arithmetic | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Book reviews: The Joy of SET and Elements of Mathematics

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Brent

I have a couple of book reviews for you today! I finished both of these books recently and really enjoyed them. Though they are quite different, both gave me new ways to think about some topics I already knew, and … Continue reading →

Posted in books, review | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sigma notation ninja tricks 1: jumping constants

Posted on March 11, 2017 by Brent

Almost exactly ten years ago, I wrote a page on this blog explaining big-sigma notation. Since then it’s consistently been one of the highest-traffic posts on my blog, and still gets occasional comments and questions. A few days ago, a … Continue reading →

Posted in algebra, arithmetic | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Riemann zeta function and prime numbers

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Brent

In a previous post I defined the famous Riemann zeta function, Today I want to give you a glimpse of what it has to do with prime numbers—which is a big part of why it is so famous. Consider the … Continue reading →

Posted in number theory | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments