Partitions - Numberphile

Partitions are a major part of the Ramanujan story (as shown in the new film about his life) - but what are they?
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Dr James Grime tackles the issue.

NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran

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[SendyTheEndless]

What's even more impressive about Ramanujan's achievement is that he didn't have the benefit of having Duplo to hand.

[jim]

"How many Christmas cards does Ramanujan have to send?"
"Infinitely many, but at least he can count them all."

[ThatoneLich]

pi keeps showing up in the strangest places.

[euttdsiggh]

even if I dont understand 98% of things he talks about, i just love his enthusiasm

[Azivegu]

college text books often have the best footnotes because you can really see how people slowly become delirious after spending hundreds of hours going through them and writing it.

[bsirius]

I'm reading *The Man Who Knew Infinity* right now. The depth of mathematical exploration in the book is more complex than the superficial depiction in the film, and it provides the extra complexity of human relations between Hardy, Littlewood and others involved in Ramanujan's life.

[mewr]

my favorite textbook footnote is from UW Math 234: "This is known as the 'sushi principle' - Raw data is better than cooked data"

[ffanatic]

I find it interesting that Einstein and boss were working on a physics problem closely related to partitions around the same time as hardy and ramanujan.

[Formulka]

damn, Ramanujan died way too young :(

[naedolor]

Jack! Draw me like one of your french partitions.

[eoghan.]

I'm a simple person who knows nothing about maths but watches numberphile. I see James Grime, Lego, and Ramanujan - I click.

[Seanytsd]

"Don't do it - you'll be sorry" on a science textbook explaining reproductive systems

[Aryan_Sanan]

I have seen Ramanaujan handwritten notes and O dear this man freaked me out. He was living in a different parallel universe

[robinofficial]

I *do* have a favorite footnote, actually. :-)

Bernard Hoëcker began his first book with a footnote (even before the first word).
It said that this footnote only existed because he just learned he could do begin a book with a footnote. :-)

So even the book wasn't about mathematics at all it was a nice self-reference, which is always cool. :-)

[SpinR]

There's a movie about this? Wow! Hope it won't be a Parker square of a movie!

[ofentsetshepe]

i just finished watching the movie now about Ramanujan...i had to come here ..

[Hecatonicosachoron]

The partition function, along with the sum of partitions and the permutations of partitions, is probably my favourite function in all of number theory. It's just so useful!

[babaopizza]

6:07 imagine going to vacation with your infinite number of friends. What hotel would you choose ? I wonder if a mathematician thought about that ?

[Kaesekuchen]

My favorite footnote was in a mathematics book in first year of my bachelor study. It was about shear matrices and showed a picture of a sheep and a deformed sheep, calling it a "sheared sheep". I found that pretty funny ._.

[yriafehtivan]

If you had all the positive integers as your friends you'd have to send infinite cards and you'd only get back -1/12