Depends on what you mean by "they" and "it". The numberphile folks undoubtedly know that they are playing fast and loose with the rules. The readers of Slate almost certainly don't know it.
> There is solid math going on here.
No, there isn't. There is solid math going on in complex analysis where you have concepts like analytic extensions that produce unintuitive but useful and (more importantly) consistent results. But that is NOT what this video is about. This video is about using high school math to "prove" a result that is simply not true under the rules of high school math. The only thing separating this from outright crackpottery is that the result they derive happens to look like one that can be legitimately derived under the rules of complex analysis and analytic extensions. But that's a mighty thin reed. It doesn't change the fact that they present the result as if it were true under the rules of high school math, and under those rules it isn't true.
EDIT: Terry Tao's article is excellent, and I am appalled (but, sadly, not surprised) that your submission was killed.
Hm, my own submission seems to have fallen off the front page awfully quickly.
EDIT2: I have been corresponding with an HN mod who informed me that my submission triggered the voting ring detector. (It was a false positive, which ought to worry someone at YC.) Also, the original Terry Tao submission has now been unkilled. I encourage you to upvote it.
Depends on what you mean by "they" and "it". The numberphile folks undoubtedly know that they are playing fast and loose with the rules. The readers of Slate almost certainly don't know it.
> There is solid math going on here.
No, there isn't. There is solid math going on in complex analysis where you have concepts like analytic extensions that produce unintuitive but useful and (more importantly) consistent results. But that is NOT what this video is about. This video is about using high school math to "prove" a result that is simply not true under the rules of high school math. The only thing separating this from outright crackpottery is that the result they derive happens to look like one that can be legitimately derived under the rules of complex analysis and analytic extensions. But that's a mighty thin reed. It doesn't change the fact that they present the result as if it were true under the rules of high school math, and under those rules it isn't true.
EDIT: Terry Tao's article is excellent, and I am appalled (but, sadly, not surprised) that your submission was killed.
Hm, my own submission seems to have fallen off the front page awfully quickly.
EDIT2: I have been corresponding with an HN mod who informed me that my submission triggered the voting ring detector. (It was a false positive, which ought to worry someone at YC.) Also, the original Terry Tao submission has now been unkilled. I encourage you to upvote it.