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In mathematics and statistics, sums of powers occur in a number of contexts: . Sums of squares arise in many contexts. For example, in geometry, the Pythagorean theorem involves the sum of two squares; in number theory, there are Legendre's three-square theorem and Jacobi's four-square theorem; and in statistics, the analysis of variance involves summing the squares of quantities.
Fermat knew that a fourth power cannot be the sum of two other fourth powers (the n = 4 case of Fermat's Last Theorem; see Fermat's right triangle theorem). Euler conjectured that a fourth power cannot be written as the sum of three fourth powers, but 200 years later, in 1986, this was disproven by Elkies with: 20615673 4 = 18796760 4 ...
Euler was aware of the equality 59 4 + 158 4 = 133 4 + 134 4 involving sums of four fourth powers; this, however, is not a counterexample because no term is isolated on one side of the equation. He also provided a complete solution to the four cubes problem as in Plato's number 3 3 + 4 3 + 5 3 = 6 3 or the taxicab number 1729.
The sum of the reciprocals of the square numbers (the Basel problem) is the transcendental number π 2 / 6 , or ζ(2) where ζ is the Riemann zeta function. The sum of the reciprocals of the cubes of positive integers is called Apéry's constant ζ(3) , and equals approximately 1.2021 .
Faulhaber's formula concerns expressing the sum of the p-th powers of the first n positive integers = = + + + + as a (p + 1)th-degree polynomial function of n.. The first few examples are well known.
In number theory, Waring's problem asks whether each natural number k has an associated positive integer s such that every natural number is the sum of at most s natural numbers raised to the power k. For example, every natural number is the sum of at most 4 squares, 9 cubes, or 19 fourth powers.
Thomas Harriot seems to have been the first to derive and write formulas for sums of powers using symbolic notation, but even he calculated only up to the sum of the fourth powers. Johann Faulhaber gave formulas for sums of powers up to the 17th power in his 1631 Academia Algebrae, far higher than anyone before him, but he did not give a ...
For example, the sum of fourth powers of integers up to n (this time with n included), is: ... related by a finite sum Stirling number formula given by = ...