Brilliant integral calculation

[Office_Shredder]

Main Question or Discussion Point

I just saw this and thought that sometimes people can get a bit too carried away with their mathematical notation. Hope you enjoy!

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/9690/weirdintegralcalculatio.jpg [Broken]

 

[AlephZero]

But that's the standard way that "real mathematicians" solve easy problems: show the problem is equivalent to a harder problem that has been solved already.

 

[pwsnafu]

I just saw this and thought that sometimes people can get a bit too carried away with their mathematical notation.

The notation seems completely fine to me. What is excessive about it? The parenthesis around the 1/12?

 

[Number Nine]

I just saw this and thought that sometimes people can get a bit too carried away with their mathematical notation. Hope you enjoy!

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/9690/weirdintegralcalculatio.jpg [Broken]

I don't think it's excessive. Certainly, multiplying everything out would make the integration dead simple, but his/her approach was pretty concise and interesting. Sometimes, a little extra complexity makes for a much more interesting argument (e.g. my favourite proof of the infinitude of prime numbers uses topology).