I just came across a way that the amazing mathematician Ramanujan developed of assigning a value to certain divergent series. I found it interesting, so I want to share a short summary of it here. It is based on the Euler–Maclaurin formula
\begin{align*} \sum_{k=\alpha}^\beta f(k) &= \int_\alpha^\beta f(t)\,dt + \frac{f(\alpha)+f(\beta)}{2} \\ &\quad+ \sum_{k=1}^n \frac{B_{2k}}{(2k)!}\Bigl(f^{(2k-1)}(\beta)-f^{(2k-1)}(\alpha)\Bigr) + R_n \end{align*}where $B_{2k}$ denotes the $(2k)$th Bernoulli number, $f$ has $2n+1$ continuous derivatives on $[\alpha,\beta]$ with $\alpha$, $\beta$, and $n\geq0$ being integers, and $R_n$ is the remainder term given by
\[ R_n = \int_\alpha^\beta \frac{B_{2n+1}(t-\lfloor t\rfloor)}{(2n+1)!}f^{(2n+1)}(t)\,dt . \] Continue reading →