Re: Infinite loop

Keith Thompson said:

Richard Heathfield <rjh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Malcolm McLean said:
[...]
The final problem in mathematics is that the funny-looking E
notation used for sums, conventionally, takes integral indices.

I've never seen /that/ written down anywhere. But okay - using only
integral indices, how would you, for example, sum the area under the
curve of y = x*x, between x = 0 and x = 1?
[...]

That would be an integral, not a summation (which uses the
"funny-looking E", also known as Sigma).

<shrug> I certainly don't claim to be a mathematician but, if I remember
my schooldays correctly, you can approximate the area under a curve by
summing the areas of a series of narrow strips. I can understand that
you might have some special meaning for "summation" which doesn't
include this particular technique, but nobody mentioned "summation"
until you did, I think. Just "notation used for sums". Why would such
summing as I have described not constitute a sum?

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at the above domain, - www.
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: [OT] Infinite loop
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