A disappearing number
Last night I saw a very interesting play, “A disappearing number” by a theatre (they’re British) group called Complicite. It was loosely about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and G. H. Hardy, along with another story about the star-crossed relationship between a British mathematician named Ruth and her mathematically illiterate Indian American businessman husband. It was very, very well staged, using blackboards and spatial dimensions in ways I haven’t seen before.
You can see a discussion of the play on YouTube here.
There was a weird math phobic vibe to parts of the production, particularly an introduction that included a few tricks and expressed wonder that someone might know the sum of the series 1+2+4+8+16.
In the relationship between Ruth and her husband much was made of the fact that the sum of the series 1 + 1/N converges on 2, and much was made of convergent and divergent series. It seemed odd to me that they didn’t just use the series 1/N, which sums to 1 as N approaches infinity, which could have an E Pluribus Unum vibe to it.
Well worth seeing if you get a chance.