The Daily Dish has been posting reader emails reporting on their " view from the shutdown ." If you think this doesn't affect you, or if you know all too well how bad this is, take a look at the growing collection of poignant stories. No one is in this alone except for the nutjobs in the House. I decided to email Andrew with my own view. I plan to send a similar letter to my congressperson. Dear Andrew, I am a professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The CfA houses one of the largest, if not the largest collection of PhD astronomers in the United States, with over 300 professional astronomers and roughly 100 doctoral and predoctoral students on a small campus a few blocks west of Harvard Yard. Under the umbrella of the CfA are about 20 Harvard astronomy professors, and 50 tenure-track Smithsonian researchers. A large fraction of the latter are civil servants currently on furlough and unable to come to work. In total, 147 FTEs...
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In any sense, this result needs serious qualification. In a nutshell, 1-1+1-1+1-1+.... is not convergent, and you therefore need to discuss analytic continuation and the Riemann zeta function.
Ed Copeland offers more details in the longer video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-d9mgo8FGk&feature=youtu.be
It's slightly disappointing how this material is presented here, which is surprising, as usually Brady Haran's stuff with the faculty at Nottingham is so good. This video seems to push the "Math is cray and totz weird!!!1!" notion without providing vital caveats and explanations.