Related papers: When do we have 1 + 1 = 11 and 2 + 2 =5?

It is mathematical folklore that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... = --1/12. This result is usually achieved using elaborate analytical methods, such as zeta function regularization or Ramanujan summation. However, in its notebooks, Ramanujan has also…

Exploring the Collatz Conjecture and changing the expression from 3n + 1 to 5n + 1, we found patterns in different sets of numbers. Some numbers reduce to one (as stated in the Collatz Conjecture), some might escape to infinity, and some…

The idea of meaning as use in language is explored in a mathematical and physical context. Two possible scenarios of further analysis are presented: Ordinal arithmetic and String theory.

This short tribute to the guru of Enumerative and Algebraic Combinatorics started out when one the authors(DZ) attended the Stanely@70 conference, that took place at the same time as the preliminary stage of the 2014 World Cup. It states a…

The starting point of this work is an equality between two quantities $A$ and $B$ found in the literature, which involve the {\em doubling-modulo-an-odd-integer} map, i.e., $x\in {\mathbb N} \mapsto 2x \bmod{(2n+1)}$ for some positive…

There is no trivial mathematics, there are only trivial mathematicians! A mathematician is trivial if he or she believes that there exists trivial mathematics. Being a non-trivial mathematician myself, I will describe ten different proofs…

We prove a conjecture posted in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, namely that there are exactly five positive integers that can be written in more than one way as the sum of a nonnegative power of 2 and a nonnegative power of 3.…

We prove some new theorems in additive number theory, using novel techniques from automata theory and formal languages. As an example of our method, we prove that every natural number > 25 is the sum of at most three natural numbers whose…

Consider the sequence $\mathcal{V}(2,n)$ constructed in a greedy fashion by setting $a_1 = 2$, $a_2 = n$ and defining $a_{m+1}$ as the smallest integer larger than $a_m$ that can be written as the sum of two (not necessarily distinct)…

For an arbitrary word $w$ on an alphabet, we can define the alternating symbol graph, $G(w)$, as the graph in which the edge $(a, b)$ is in $E$ iff the letters $a$ and $b$ alternate in the word $w$. A graph $G = (V, E)$ is said to be…

When we enumerate numbers up to some specific value, or, even if we do not specify the number, we know at the same time that there are much greater numbers which should be reachable by the same enumeration, but indeed we also congnize them…

It is well known that the numbers $(2m)! (2n)!/m! n! (m+n)!$ are integers, but in general there is no known combinatorial interpretation for them. When $m=0$ these numbers are the middle binomial coefficients $\binom{2n}{n}$, and when $m=1$…

The generalized Erd\H{o}s-Straus conjecture, proposed by Wac\l{}aw Sierpi\'{n}ski in 1956, asks whether the Diophantine equation \[ \frac{5}{a} = \frac{1}{b} + \frac{1}{c} + \frac{1}{d} \] admits positive integer solutions $b,c,d \in…

Given a sequence 1, 1, 5, 23, 135, 925, 7285, 64755, 641075, 6993545, 83339745,..., how can we guess a formula for it? This article will quickly walk you through the concept of ansatz for classes of polynomial, $C$-finite, holonomic, and…

A childhood observation of Thakur Anukulchandra that "one and one can only be two ones, not simply two" motivates a precise inquiry: what, exactly, is asserted when we pass from two concrete individuals to the numeral "2"? This paper does…

The famous strongly binary Goldbach's conjecture asserts that every even number $2n \geq 8$ can always be expressible as the sum of two distinct odd prime numbers. We use a new approach to dealing with this conjecture. Specifically, we…

Why does the physical 4-dimensional space have a 3 + 1 signature rather than a 4 + 0 or a 2 + 2 for its metric? We give a simple explanation based largely on a group-theoretic argument a la Wigner. Applied to flat spaces of higher…

We show that for any unambiguous finite automaton with $n$ states there exists an unambiguous finite automaton with $\sqrt{n+1} \cdot 2^{n/2}$ states that recognizes the complement language. This builds and improves upon a similar result by…

Let $A$ and $B$ be sets of $k\ge5$ elements in $F=\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ the field with $p>2k-2$ elements. We denote by $A\dot{+}B$ the set of different elements of $F$ that can be written in the form $a+b$, where $a\in A$, $b\in B$,…

The 1-3-5 conjecture of Z.-W. Sun states that any $n\in\mathbb N=\{0,1,2,\ldots\}$ can be written as $x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2$ with $w,x,y,z\in\mathbb N$ such that $x+3y+5z$ is a square. In this paper, via the theory of ternary quadratic forms and…