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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

These kinds of articles about pi, or numbers, where they try to summon up some mystery and wonder around it, come across to me as not very genuine. I get the impression it gets upvoted because people want to feel like they're smarter, or more geeky and hip for having looked at it.

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One of the most "mind boggling" areas of math is number theory

Math dealing with real/complex numbers has been vastly explored, and there are very powerful tools, and computers are very good at these kind of problems (Calculus, etc)

With number theory, progress is much harder, things work in a completely different logic (think for example that 5+3 can be 0 for example)

One of the places where these mysterious sides of math comes together is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function

>With number theory, progress is much harder, things work in a completely different logic (think for example that 5+3 can be 0 for example)

I wasn't aware that the modulo operation had been raised to a field of mathematics.

Modulo operations is part of "number theory 101"

And ok, addition is nice and fun. Then you go to multiplication

Then you end up with Galois Fields.

Never underestimate the amount of discussion that goes into things like 1+1=2

> ...for example that 5+3 can be 0 for example

When is that example true? It seems like you made that up.

mod 8?

Hardly the 'mystery of number theory' the poster was talking about. There was no 'mod 8' syntax expressed in the example.

Yes, it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_arithmetic

But you don't need to write "mod 8" in a congruence class

Oh, you want "the mystery of number theory" you can start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_little_theorem

It was solved, and he (Fermat) was likely wrong, given the resulting proof.

(5 + 3) % 8 = 0 is not the same as 5 + 3 = 0

I'm not looking for mystery, I'm wondering why people think it exists, and are faking its existence by being imprecise.

I don't know, I've met folks for whom math is so magical they do nothing but talk about it all the time. I can recognize that passion in other pursuits as well, from knitting to physics.

I find a close correlation between people who play with numbers to people who like to solve puzzles.

Or perhaps math are fun and people upvote a post they liked.

I wonder if mathematicians recite beautiful proofs as fourplay...

"I wonder if mathematicians recite beautiful proofs as fourplay ... "

I see what you did there.

Probably not, since most (?) beautiful proofs are symbolic and not very recitable.

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