this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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The most realistic part of this joke is that the bartender is also a mathematician, probably after they did not qualify for any phd research grant.
Ouch!
On behalf of British pub goers, a half is a perfectly normal thing to order. :p
I get the physics one but not the math one
The math one uses the fact that 1 + 2 + 3 + ... "=" -1/12, where the equality is in the sense of Ramanujan summation. Classically, the series diverges, so using the equality sign is a bit deceptive. However, in some contexts, it is meaningful to assign a sum to divergent series.
Ahhhh Ramanujan summation. The Forsythe plausabilities but with regards to polynumerstatistical deprecations. Hortense Guildmeier is rolling in his grave!
Those are words
I'm not sure they are!
I am a wordologist, and those are definitely probably words.
I've heard those words! Er, I mean, I've heard words!
I believe you, but that made about as much sense to me as when Wesley saves the ship by reversing the polarity of the navigational deflector array.
Oh, good. There's a Numberphile video on it linked at the end. That gives me much better odds of understanding this than just reading the article.
Actually, the Numberphile video is notorious for lacking mathematical rigor. Mathologer did a video on it. IMO, it's really really important to explain the difference between what's going on here (assigning a number to a divergent series) and what we ordinarily do (computing the limit of a sequence of partial sums).
There was a full on mathematical war on YouTube, with numberphile coming back later to show that most partial sum methods also end up at -1/12.
As a science nerd, mathologer basically just took the camp of "old concensus" and gave no other argument than "this is alien math, nope, I don't like it". It just felt like mathologer was Pythagoras fighting against irrational numbers...
As a science nerd, mathologer basically just took the camp of "old concensus" and gave no other argument than "this is alien math, nope, I don't like it".
I mean maybe in the first video, but not the one I linked. Here, he was very precise about the mistakes Numberphile made in the presentation, and the purpose and utility of standard summation of convergent series versus the other methods of summation. Like he's not dissing the idea or utility of summing divergent series literally at all, just Numberphile's oversimplified presentation of it.
Yeah that's fair! I didn't get through some of his videos, being more of a downer "grumpy style" 😉
I'll try to watch that again
There have been some claims that the numberphile video is very misrepresentative of the underlying math. But I never dug deep enough into it.
Feels like a risky click. I'm not sure my worldview can take any more shattering. It's already shattered I tell you. SHATTERED.
And that -1/12 bs is why I cannot math.
1+2+3 ... tends toward infinity and there's no amount of playing with numbers will convince me otherwise.
And that -1/12 bs is why I cannot math.
it's not actually math. It's people coming up with alternative definitions and then feeling smug when their alternative definitions give weird results.
it's not actually math.
It literally is math tho
It's people coming up with alternative definitions and then feeling smug when their alternative definitions give weird results.
Yeah because these weird definitions might be useful in some other context.
Like robbing a bartender. Or your 401(k).
None of those contexts include ordering a number of beers
But that's literally the joke in the meme tho
Ostensibly it's used a lot in quantum physics
That's all that math is about.
It's really not.
Also, here's a video on why that -1/12 stuff is pretty much nonsense:
1+2+3… absolutely diverges to infinity. In order to get the -1/12 result you have to explicitly suspend the normal rules governing math in very specific ways. Some YouTubers for clickbait effect pretend that you are not suspending the rules to get that result. However, suspending the rules in the ways that allow for -1/12 demonstrates all these patterns that are also cool if you are a big enough nerd to think number manipulation like that is cool.
i stop at 0.999... == 1 thanks :)
Hello, I play with numbers:
1+2+3+...=S
S-S=1+2+3+4+...
-1-2-3-...=
1+1+1+1+...=S-S=0
Moral of the story: ones together are nothing.
Thank you for your attention.
let me hand you a tissue, looks like you got some 'stuff' in your text box
Much appreciated. 🤧
lol 1-1, 2-2 etc.
How do you get 1 + 2-1?
You need to distribute that minus sign to all numbers in the sequence. You can’t leave off the first one.
It's an infinite series, love, I just moved it, there are still enough elements in them because, well, they are infinite. If you are so sad about it, write the second one as 0-S, changes nothing but now you have a donut to pair up with the 1 in the first series.
He has a plus one, and a minus one, a plus two, and a minus two, and so on. This is analogous to how conditionally convergent series can be modified to give any finite (or infinite) sum merely by changing the order of the terms.
Me, having dyscalculia: ok
I had a student tasked with summing a finite geometric sequence with |r|>1, let's say 1+2+4+8+16. He had apparently forgotten the formula for that, but knew the formula for the infinite series a/(1-r). Good enough he thinks, and sums 1+2+4+... = -1, then subtracts off the excess terms 32+64+128+... = -32, and gets the correct answer of 31.
It is actually a completely correct calculation if you work in p-adic numbers or formal power series.
Indeed, and would have earned full marks had he said that, or even showed any awareness that his intermediate results were somehow nonstandard.
You gotta make sure those tricky infinite mathematicians order an absolutely convergent series of beers before you sell them 🍺
...but only three of them ordered beers
i thought the first one ended with "after 4 orders the bartender says 'you guys suck' and pours two beers."
This bar's pricing makes no sense whatsoever. One beer is $1. One and 3/4 beers is also $1. Maybe they round down? Then, everybody should order 0.9999... beer, except that for some reason seventy-two beers is -$1? Weird.
They mean that the sequences go on forever, but the joke definitely doesn't make that clear.
Too subtle a joke, I guess. The description is just missing "and so on." But the "and so on" is the crux of the bullshit in the mathematical "proof" referenced.