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Legendre's three-square theorem states which numbers can be expressed as the sum of three squares; Jacobi's four-square theorem gives the number of ways that a number can be represented as the sum of four squares. For the number of representations of a positive integer as a sum of squares of k integers, see Sum of squares function.
The Basel problem is a problem in mathematical analysis with relevance to number theory, concerning an infinite sum of inverse squares. It was first posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1650 and solved by Leonhard Euler in 1734, [ 1 ] and read on 5 December 1735 in The Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences . [ 2 ]
The problem is uninteresting for K of characteristic 2, since over such fields every sum of squares is a square, and we exclude this case. It is believed that otherwise admissibility is independent of the field of definition. [1]: 137
Mathematical induction can be informally illustrated by reference to the sequential effect of falling dominoes. [1] [2]Mathematical induction is a method for proving that a statement () is true for every natural number, that is, that the infinitely many cases (), (), (), (), … all hold.
In proof by mathematical induction, a single "base case" is proved, and an "induction rule" is proved that establishes that any arbitrary case implies the next case. Since in principle the induction rule can be applied repeatedly (starting from the proved base case), it follows that all (usually infinitely many) cases are provable. [ 15 ]
In mathematics, summation is the addition of a sequence of numbers, called addends or summands; the result is their sum or total.Beside numbers, other types of values can be summed as well: functions, vectors, matrices, polynomials and, in general, elements of any type of mathematical objects on which an operation denoted "+" is defined.
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.
Comment: The proof of Euler's four-square identity is by simple algebraic evaluation. Quaternions derive from the four-square identity, which can be written as the product of two inner products of 4-dimensional vectors, yielding again an inner product of 4-dimensional vectors: (a·a)(b·b) = (a×b)·(a×b).