# Natural Deductions

Expository preaching, non-rigorous proofs

## Thursday, 22 April 2010

### Infinity factorial and Wallis' formula

In his second letter to Hardy, Ramanujan stated:

$1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + \cdots = -\frac{1}{12}$
Hardy could tell Ramanujan was a genius from this equation because he must have developed the theory of the zeta function, and its functional equation.

In this excellent note by Dror Bar-Natan, we start with the following equations:

$1 \times 2 \times 3 \times 4 \times \cdots = \sqrt{2 \pi}$ $1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + \cdots = -\frac{1}{2}$
and are asked to derive the Wallis' formula for $\pi$. This will use a couple of double factorial identities.

$\frac{\pi}{2}$

$= \frac{1}{4} \times 2 \pi$

$= {2^{-\frac{1}{2}}}^4 \times {\infty !}^2$

$= \frac{{2^{-\infty}}^4 {\infty !}^4}{{\infty !}^2}$

$= \frac{{\infty !!}^4}{{\infty !}^2}$

$= \frac{2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 4 \times 4 \times 4 \times 4 \times 6 \times 6 \times 6 \times 6 \cdots}{1 \times 2 \times 2 \times 3 \times 3 \times 4 \times 4 \times 5 \times 5 \times 6 \times 6 \times 7 \times 7 \cdots}$

$= \frac{2}{1} \frac{2}{3} \frac{4}{3} \frac{4}{5} \frac{6}{5} \frac{6}{7} \cdots \qed$

What is infinity factorial (and why might we care)?
Srinivasa Ramanujan - G. H. Hardy
The Euler-Maclaurin formula, Bernoulli numbers, the zeta function, and real-variable analytic continuation - Terence Tao
On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude - Bernhard Riemann
Double Factorial - Mathworld