Talk:Euler's constant

Transcendental

Is there a name for the conjecture that γ is transcendental? --noösfractal 01:26, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

No, it has no name. However, if you prove it is transcendental it will probably be named AFTER you, like Apery's constant. Whether its irrational is probably a more "answerable" question and is what most people are gunning for. Hope you enjoyed my edits on this awesome number! More is coming once I get my EDM.--Hypergeometric2F1[a,b,c,x] 14:22, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Could the name be changed?

There's no reason to call this the Euler-Mascheroni constant instead of just Euler's constant. Euler defined it, proved that the limit in its definition exists, and then calculated it to 16 decimal places. Mascheroni eked out 3 more decimal places and gave it a new name; not exactly enough to have it named after him. Mathworld calls it the Euler-Mascheroni constant, but they are in the minority on this. Plenty of books and other sites call it simply Euler's constant, so there won't be any extra confusion by Wikipedia changing the name and then mentioning that some misguiding people mistakenly attribute the constant to Mascheroni. I don't know how to make changes to the title of an entry; maybe it's not possible without admin intervention. One option is to move the text over to Euler's constant and then redirect Euler-Mascheroni constant to there.

But isn't Euler's constant more often used to refer to e rather than gamma ? Gandalf61 09:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Some people do this, however, it is incorrect. Having a clear cut note to that effect and a link to e would probably make sense. JoshuaZ 14:02, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Gandalf61, disagree with JoshuaZ. See List of topics named after Leonhard Euler; these are not the only two constants named after Euler. linas 00:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, if the use denotation of e as Euler's constant is that common, then I withdraw my objection. Possibly a disambig page would still make sense? JoshuaZ 01:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It looks like there are three constants named for Euler on that page: e, γ, and C_a. But even if there are more, it seems to make more sense to call them all "Euler's number" and refer to them with different symbols, rather than misattribute one of them to someone who didn't do anything significant with it. The only reason I could see to keep it this way is overwhelming convention (like with Venn diagrams), but as I said, it appears to be mostly just Mathworld and Wikipedia doing this at the moment, and authors who got their information from Mathworld or Wikipedia. --Pexatus 06:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not just Mathworld and Wikipedia. Havil writes that "Its full accepted name is the Euler-Mascheroni constant" (p. 90), despite acknowledging that Mascheroni's primary contribution was to cause other mathematicians trouble with his erroneous calculation. I prefer "Euler's constant" myself, but I think the current title is more appropriate for Wikipedia, not least for disambiguation purposes. Fredrik Johansson 08:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Practically speaking though, I think most people call this one Euler's Constant and e Euler's Number. Holomorph 12:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the "official" terms are, some users looking for this Euler-Mascheroni constant would have trouble finding it in Wikipedia. For this reason I have just put a link to this article at the e article, and I hope it stays there. Noetica 23:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to reopen this after 3 years. However, Wikipedia policy on this is quite clear: the naming convention says that the title of an article should be that which "the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize". There is no doubt at all that the usual name for this number is "Euler's Constant". I do not remember ever having come across the use of that term for e. Google searches are not reliable sources of usage statistics, but for what it is worth one confirmed my own experience: "Euler's Constant" got substantially more hits than "Euler-Mascheroni constant", and checking every hit on the first few pages failed to reveal a single use of "Euler's constant" to refer to e, nor to anything else other than gamma.

It follows that, by Wikipedia policy, the title of the article should be "Euler's constant". Certainly it would be a good idea to put a link to the page on e, as people may sometimes confuse "Euler's constant" with "Euler's number". JamesBWatson (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

More than a decade later, and the evidence presented here is no longer applicable, I think. Searching for "Euler's constant" in both Google and DuckDuckGo gives a mix of results, mostly referring to e, not γ. In what now passes for convention these days, asking ChatGPT a bunch of times about what Euler's constant is, it refers to e more times than γ.  cjquines  (talk) 23:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Wilks (2006) cite this number as "Euler" not as "Euler-mascheroni". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.105.70.136 (talk) 15:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Why this question has not been addressed? The evidence for a name change has been presented. What is the evidence for the current name? Xelnx (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Irrationality

I read somewhere that it is not known wether or not γ is irrational is disputed. Would its irrationality not follow from the first limit definition at the beginning of the article? the sum of the reciprocals of any natural number of numbers will of course be rational, and following from the irrationality of e, the natural logatihm of any integer is irrational (except zero), so wouldn't their differenc be irrational? -- He Who Is^{[ Talk ]} 21:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

It would not follow. The sum of any finite number of rational terms would of course be rational; but here an infinite number of diminishing rational terms is being summed. Your question is a useful one, though. It hints at why most mathematicians would swear to the irrationality of γ, I think, even in the absence of a proof. Noetica 23:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

In other words, each term in the sequence whose limit is gamma is indeed irrational, but the limit of a sequence of irrational terms can be rational e.g.

$\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }2^{\frac {1}{n}}=1$

Gandalf61 10:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I suppose I shouuld have thought that over more. I also apologise for the number of grammatical errors in my previous post. Looking at it now almost makes me cringe. -- He Who Is^{[ Talk ]} 12:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

http://arxiv.org/ftp/math/papers/0310/0310404.pdf claims to be a proof that this constant is irrational. That was written in 2003. So what's wrong with this picture? Should this article be updated? -- not-so-anonymous, 2012-03-30 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.67.213.36 (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

See #Proof of irrationality?. --84.130.254.14 (talk) 17:14, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Practical use for this constant

Reading this article through and through, one gets the feeling that Gamma is some sort of bizarre useless constant, with an artifical definition and connections to other mysterious and highly complex mathematical function.

Wouldn't it be nice to see in the article some practical use for this constant? Its practical use comes from its definition, being able to approximate the sum of 1/k by using the log function and Gamma.

Here is an example use, that my father showed me as a kid, taken from the book "Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability With Solutions". The question is: There are N different coupons in cereal boxes, and a set of one of each is required to get a prize. In each box there is one coupon. How many boxes on the avarage do you have to buy to win the prize?

A quick Google found a copy of the answer (I don't have the book here..) in [1]. In short, the number of boxes you need to open is

   N * (1/(N-1) + 1/(N-2) + ... + 1/2 + 1)

Can we, for large N, approximate this sum with some basic functions found in everyone's calculator? It turns out the answer is yes: for large N, it can be approximated by

     = N * (ln(N) + γ)

Nyh 13:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't brush of Gamma so quickly. Do you not see the beauty in this number? Practical use? Please...have you ever read A Mathematician's Apology? The important things in this Universe have to practical use. Gamma's importance shows itself in the way it delightfully appears in all sorts of formulas, integrals, and so on. Just look at all those pretty forumlas. (BTW, I virtually created this page, and put all these formulas on here about 1.5 years ago).

That was a neat problem though.--Hypergeometric2F1(a,b,c,x) 04:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Symbol for Eulers constant

I'm doing some work on Unicode related articles and I want to include a linkk from the Unicode character Eulers constant (ℇ U+2107) to the appropriate artilce. However, upon seeing no mention of this notation in the article, I thought maybe I have the wrong constant. Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the article should mention this other notation (which in my fonts has no resemblence to gamma). Unicode includes Eulers constant as one of only three explicitly named constants with sa Unicode character devoted to it. Please let me know if there's another article that I should be looking for. Indexheavy 07:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Unicode 2107 looks like a curly capital E in my browser, so I suspect it is actually intended to denote Euler's number, not the Euler-Mascheroni constant. Not sure though why Unicode feel they need to introduce a special symbol for this - the standard notation is a lower case e. Gandalf61 10:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Unicode, especially earlier versions (character in question from v1.1, dating to 1993), does not seek to introduce anything. Instead it tries to encode things already in use, so there is a single standard. Evidently this stems from a Xerox standard, XCCS 353/046. I'm a bit perplexed by this symbol, myself. All I can infer is that the Xerox standard had a specialty symbol, a bit unlike anything Unicode already had encoded, and the Unicode guys thought "That difference may, in fact, be significant - better add it." As a font designer, I'd like to know what it originally referred to. I may choose to make it more "e"-like or "γ"-like in appearance. The glyph form typically used is very close to an upper or lower case open e (Ɛ, ɛ), which could have been used as a variant for the more usual closed e—though why Unicode wouldn't have just unified with one of those characters, I'm not sure. ⇔ ChristTrekker 17:00, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

This is truly bizarre. Nevertheless, if I’m reading correctly the info in e.g. [2], this is a compatibility character with canonical decomposition to Ɛ (U+0190 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OPEN E), hence you can’t go wrong by designing the glyph the same way.—Emil J. 14:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Claim by anon contributor

however the most mathematicians in world as : sorin radulescu ,marius radulescu, ene horia , dorel homentcovschi,lazar dragos ,univ,bucharest with mathematics faculty , albu thoma , t.zevedei , irina olteanu , solved the main problems as euler and radon- nikodym ,together optimal maitenance policy , in others trep ,problems ;this can be verified —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.136.183.232 (talk • contribs)

Then please provide a reliable source for your claim, and also please take the time to write a clear and gramatical explanation, in English, of what you claim has been solved, how and by whom. Gandalf61 10:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Continued fraction representation in infobox

I think the continued fraction representation in the infobox is more confusing then helpful. Only four places can fit in, and the way it's written makes it seems like there should be an obvious rule continuing this expansion, which of course there isn't. In the decimal/binary expansions, there are enough digits to make it obvious that the reader is not expected to be able to continue the sequence on his own. --Zvika 08:01, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and added a disclaimer, as in Pi. I still think the continued fraction does not contribute much, but at least now it's not as misleading. --Zvika 05:06, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Rational??

Any post-2004 mathematician who thinks this number is likely rational?? Any numbers once conjectured to be irrational but now known to be rational?? Georgia guy 22:17, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

see #Why gamma may be rational --84.130.141.54 (talk) 09:45, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

2nd question: maybe Legendre's constant? --84.130.141.54 (talk) 09:48, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Natural Logarithm?

It says in the definition it is the difference between the harmonic series and the natural log, ln. Yet in the equation, it is represented as log(n). What's up with that? Nonagonal Spider (talk) 08:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The article follows the convention used by mathematicians, which is that log(x) means the natural logarithm unless another base is specifically mentioned. Gandalf61 (talk) 21:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It also uses ln in several references. Either way it should be consistent. Are any of the logs base 10? If not they should probably be changed to ln to increase readability. GromXXVII (talk) 00:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I've changed ln to log in the Asymptotic expansions section, so that at least this article is now internally consistent (I don't think we should change the occurences in the references section, as these are in the actual titles of published articles). There doesn't seem to be a consistent convention across Wikipedia mathematics articles for representing the natural logarithm function - Euler's totient function uses log; harmonic number uses ln; and Riemann zeta function uses both ! Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Conventions does not set a standard. Maybe this wider issue should be raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

"Mathematicians" do not have a convention on the issue. The meaning of log varies with the local custom (across universities, departments, research environments and so on). As a matter of clarity, one should use either ln or log_e for the natural logarithm, and log₁₀ for the base-ten logarithm. Clarity is the name of the game. 80.202.223.150 (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Our logarithm article says "Mathematicians generally understand both "ln(x)" and "log(x)" to mean log_e(x) and write "log₁₀(x)" when the base-10 logarithm of x is intended". For another reference, see this Math Forum answer. This also coincides with my own experience - a typical mathematician will assume that log(x) means log_e(x), whereas a typical engineer will assume that it means log₁₀(x). I agree with you that it would be clearer if the base were always stated explicitly, but the correct place to suggest this in Wikipedia is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Label for Integrals

In the section on properties, in the subsection on integrals, the article says "Indefinite integrals in which". The integrals are not indefinite. Perhaps the author means improper? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.236.11.210 (talk) 05:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Irrational?

The infobox suggests that gamma is irrational, while this is unknown afaik. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.93.56.14 (talk) 11:12, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right. — Emil J. 11:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

incorrect formula?

One of the formulas (referenced to Kraemer, 2005, which is now a dead link) appears to be false. See http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=159891 Suggest simply removing that paragraph? --24.34.22.136 (talk) 23:14, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, something's wrong, indeed. The first n terms of the sum give the value with error $\sum _{k=n+1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{k\lfloor {\sqrt {k}}\rfloor ^{2}}}\approx \sum _{k=n+1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{k^{2}}}\approx {\frac {1}{n}}$, so taking n = 2000000 I should get 6 decimal places of the sum correctly: it's ≈2.195811. OTOH, values of π and γ are readily available, γ + π²/6 = 2.22214973…. The other Vacca series is also wrong, and if fact seems to give the same value. I'm cutting the paragraph out, here it is if anyone feels like fixing it. Catalan's integral as well as the Vacca 1910 series appear in MathWorld (not that it would error free) and the series appears numerically to work, so I'll leave them alone. — Emil J. 10:41, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted stuff from the article

In 1926, Vacca found:

${\gamma +\zeta (2)=\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{k\lfloor {\sqrt {k}}\rfloor ^{2}}}=1+{\frac {1}{2}}+{\frac {1}{3}}+{\frac {1}{4}}\left({\frac {1}{4}}+\dots +{\frac {1}{8}}\right)+{\frac {1}{9}}\left({\frac {1}{9}}+\dots +{\frac {1}{15}}\right)+\dots }$

or

${\gamma =\sum _{k=2}^{\infty }{\frac {k-\lfloor {\sqrt {k}}\rfloor ^{2}}{k^{2}\lfloor {\sqrt {k}}\rfloor ^{2}}}={\frac {1}{2^{2}}}+{\frac {2}{3^{2}}}+{\frac {1}{2^{2}}}\left({\frac {1}{5^{2}}}+{\frac {2}{6^{2}}}+{\frac {3}{7^{2}}}+{\frac {4}{8^{2}}}\right)+{\frac {1}{3^{2}}}\left({\frac {1}{10^{2}}}+\dots +{\frac {6}{15^{2}}}\right)+\dots }$

(see Krämer, 2005)

[The first] Vacca's series may be obtained by manipulation of Catalan's 1875 integral.

---

The correct series of Vacca is:

$\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }\left({\frac {1}{\lfloor {\sqrt {k}}\rfloor ^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{k}}\right)=\gamma +\zeta (2)$

The error roots in the wrong typo of the online JFM. --Lagerfeuer (talk) 20:48, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a source? And what's "JFM"? — Emil J. 09:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, the verification of that series (but not its source) is available at http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=1578117#1578117 . I think that the person who added that is likely Stefan Kraemer, and the source is again his 2005 thesis (or its extensions). Incidentally, the link to that work is no longer dead. --24.34.22.136 (talk) 12:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

When I wrote "source", I meant a reliable source according to WP standards which could be put in the article. I'm afraid the Art of Problem Solving forum does not meet the criteria. I have convinced myself that the derivation is correct, but a formal source is still needed. Krämer's thesis would be good enough, but we need to check that it really states it. You seem to suggest that it is available online; could you post the exact link? I gather that his website is back online, but I couldn't find a copy of his thesis there. — Emil J. 13:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The source was given with "Vacca 1926". Vacca wrote only one paper in 1926: JFM 52.0360.01. I'm sorry, I see now that a lot of mathematicians are not familar with the famous JFM, but you can quickly have a look at the online-version:

• http://www.emis.de/cgi-bin/jfmen/MATH/JFM/?type=html&an=JFM%2052.0360.01

Please note: the online-version has a lot af typos!

My thesis and its extensions are not online (because the interest of the famous publisher Springer Germany was zero and he published a german translation of Havil's book). --Lagerfeuer (talk) 18:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. — Emil J. 10:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Removal of infobox

Based upon a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#"Infoboxes" on number articles, I've removed the infobox from the article. If anyone disagrees, could you please join the discussion there. Thanks, Paul August ☎ 14:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I have suggested centralizing this discussion to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Irrational_numbers_infobox and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Infobox_with_various_expansions as it refers to an infobox occurring in several articles. Please go there to build consensus on this edit. RobHar (talk) 19:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Symbol γ, Mascheroni (1790), Bretschneider (1835) and the article of Glaisher (1872)

I found out in 1993, that there is a typo in the well known article of James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1872). He wrote:

Euler's constant which throughout this note will be called γ after Mascheroni, De Morgan, &c. [...]

It is clearly convenient that the constant should generally be denoted by the same letter. Euler used C and O for it; Legendre, Lindman, &c., C; De Haan A; and Mascheroni, De Morgan, Boole, &c., have written it γ, which is clearly the most suitable, if it is to have a distinctive letter assigned to it. It has sometimes (as in Crelle, t.57, p.128) been quoted as Mascheroni's constant, but it is evident that Euler's labours have abundantly

justified his claim to its being named after him.

— Glaisher: On the history of Euler's constant, 1872, p.25,30

Mascheroni has written only one paper about Euler's Constant (1790). He use only A. Comparing de:David Bierens de Haan using A, Glaisher should be corrected with "De Haan and Mascheroni A; De Morgan, Boole, &c., have written it γ". There are a lot of early papers about the Integrallogarithm. Around 1800 there was a famous discussion about the constant of the Logarithmic integral function (which is equal with γ). For example, the german mathematician Carl Anton Bretschneider (1808-1878) use in his 1837-paper (1835) the symbol γ.

It is indefensible that Havil unaudited the claim of Glaisher has taken over with

Mascheroni's permanent contribution to γ's story (apart from making a mistake that led to at least eight subsequent recalculations of the number) was to name it γ [...] By such serendipity, its full accepted name is the Euler-Mascheroni constant.
Glaisher, J.W.L. 1972 On the history of Euler's constant

— Julian Havil, 2003, p.90,256

An even more indefensible is that repeat these mistakes in the German translation (2007).

After long years I could't solve the main problem: What papers of De Morgan and Boole mentioned Glaisher? --Lagerfeuer (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Unverifiable/unpublished claims

Article contained a table of decimal expansions of this constant, but several entries in the table did not meet Wikipedia's requirements for verifiable source citations, so I removed them. Basically, a few people were claiming to have calculated hundreds of millions or billions of digits and linking to their personal websites as sources. Please cite real, published references for these sorts of claims. -Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.55.123.68 (talk) 08:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

True, they aren't fully verifiable sources. But don't take them out of the table. At the most, flag them as "unverified". By removing them from the table it implies that only 172,000 digits are known when in fact billions of digits are known.

Also, the references (though not fully verifiable), come from at least 3 different and independent sources which all seem to agree with each other as far as the digits go.

Here's are some alternate sources for some of those entries:

http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Miscellaneous/Records.html (List of the current world records.)

http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/constants.html (This has records of when each record has been broken.)

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2009/01/19235/nu-student-outwits-computing-experts-breaks-record/ (News article for the 14.9 billion digit computation.)

http://www.ginac.de/~kreckel/news.html (This one mentions the 2 and 5 billion digit computations by Shigeru Kondo.)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.249.252 (talk) 18:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to take away your world record or something, but come on, this does not belong in an encyclopedia if the only sources that exist are a student newspaper article and two other websites linking to your personal homepages. Have a read through the Wikipedia verifiability standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability. (Guinness Book might be a better vehicle for you?)

Is there a way to flag this for some higher level / more experienced Wikipedia editor to mediate the dispute? If I'm wrong, fine, I'm wrong, but it seems silly to me for us to keep reversing each other's changes. At the same time, I believe you guys are abusing Wikipedia for your own self-promotional purposes, and that really hurts the Wikipedia project because it confirms the stereotype (some) people have that Wikipedia is amateurish and unreliable.

Someone pointed me to this page after noticing something peculiar. I believe I'm the one you should be talking to.

First of all, I am in complete agreement with you that some of the references don't meet the Wikipedia standard. However, the section is called "Known Digits". Although I agree that those entries can be removed, I believe that there should be at least a mention of the purported larger computations. Otherwise, the reader is left with the impression that fewer than a million digits are known - though I wouldn't go as far as to call it "misleading".

Secondly, I don't see why numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/constants.html fails to meet standards. It is a well-respected and well-referenced 3rd party math site that keeps track of these records. Furthermore, it has no affiliation with the past 10 years of record computations.

If you're looking for a Guinness Book entry, or an IEEE publication of the recent records, that is unlikely to happen. These kind of records are far too obscure for anyone to be able to publish beyond a webpage. I understand that this is irrelevant to the topic of verifiability, but it is the reason why the recent computations have not been published any further.

And lastly, nobody here is using Wikipedia for promotional purposes of any kind. I understand your concern for Wikipedia, but to accuse multiple people of "self-promotional purposes" is completely uncalled for. Wikipedia isn't a place for unfounded accusations of any kind.

Also, your tone of writing suggests contempt towards the record holders. Is there a reason for this?

I agree, can we get a mod here? I'll accept whatever decision they come to.

Alex

199.74.85.192 (talk) 04:42, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The thought that strikes me, reading the above discussion, is "why does anyone care?" Frankly, whether anyone with time on their hands and nothing useful to do with it has calculated γ to thousands of millions of decimal places or not is of no significance to anyone, and if someone has done so then who that was is of no significance either. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Solving for Gamma

Just to show how to solve for gamma in a cited article:

e^zeta[1]=2.5188167*(1+2+3+4+...n) as n goes to infinity

where 2.51881667... = sqrt(2)*e^gamma

Doing an ln to both sides:

zeta[1] = ln(2.5188167) + ln(1+2+3+4+...n)

zeta[1] - ln(1+2+3+4+...n) = ln(2.51881667..)

Substitution sqrt(2)*e^gamma for 2.51881667

zeta[1] - ln(1+2+3+4+...n) = ln(sqrt(2)*e^gamma))

zeta[1] - ln(1+2+3+4+...n) = ln(sqrt(2)) + gamma

Formally,

$\gamma =\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\left[\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}-\ln {\sqrt {\sum _{k=1}^{n}k}}\right]-\ln {\sqrt {2}}$

--Ryansinclair (talk) 13:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no reference to a published reliable source in the OEIS link, and neither it nor your derivation seem to make much sense. There is no such thing as zeta(1), to begin with. The final result is wrong, it is easy to see that the limit is divergent: $\ln \sum _{k=1}^{n}k=\ln \left({\frac {n(n+1)}{2}}\right)=2\ln n+O(1)$ and $\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}=\ln n+O(1)$, hence $\lim _{n\to \infty }\left(\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}-\ln \sum _{k=1}^{n}k\right)=\lim _{n\to \infty }(-\ln n+O(1))=-\infty$.—Emil J. 14:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Emil is correct, it appears a square root is missing. The correct formula should read:

$\gamma =\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }\left[\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}-\ln {\sqrt {\sum _{k=1}^{n}k}}\right]-\ln {\sqrt {2}}$

I believe this formula does converge. It should be posted. --Rsg4191984 (talk) 06:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

$\ln {\sqrt {\sum _{k=1}^{n}k}}={\frac {1}{2}}(\ln n+\ln(n+1))-{\frac {1}{2}}\ln 2$. And since $\ln {\sqrt {2}}={\frac {1}{2}}\ln 2$, the final term cancels. So it more or less amounts to the definition of $\gamma$, written in a confusing way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thinkatron (talk • contribs) 07:51, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Proof of irrationality?

I came across this paper, which claims to prove that $\gamma$ is irrational:

http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0310404

It doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere, is it bogus?

Pscholl (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears to have never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. ArXiv does not review correctness. I say, "bogus". Justin W Smith ^talk/_stalk 22:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree. IMHO his handwaving at the end of 3.1 where he says $\alpha \!$ and $\beta \!$ have the same "attributes" is the problem. Mark Hurd (talk) 05:59, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Why gamma may be rational

See here. Count Iblis (talk) 01:07, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Not really, since from the appearance and ubiquity of this constant in very large number of mathematical formulas and theorems, it is likely to be an irrational number instead. The article itself does mention several progresses towarding the proof of its irrationality, in which an author show that if γ = a/b (where a,b are positive integers) then the denominator would be unusually immense (larger than 10^244663). However, the case that γ is rational cannot be currently ruled out with confidence =)). 2402:800:63AC:BE7D:D056:F908:8ED1:3853 (talk) 10:30, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

On the inclusion of the hurwitz zeta function in the rational zeta expansion

I was wondering if there was any particular reason why the hurwitz zeta function is used here instead of either bernouilli numbers or the values of the zeta function at the negative integers? From what I can tell, Euler would have derived this from the Euler-maclaurin formula to begin with, which would have involved bernouilli numbers rather than the hurwitz zeta. I have no particular problems with the hurwitz zeta, I'm just wondering why it seems to have been given preference over what would be a more recognisable expansion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.10.241.81 (talk) 21:13, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

ℇ (U+2107 EULER CONSTANT)

After "fixing a double redirect" this mysterious character redirects here. But its appearance is not like γ. Any thoughts, which of Euler's constants it should signify? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:43, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps they were thinking of Euler's number? —Mark Dominus (talk) 17:02, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I newer saw such a symbol for e, which is always written with a loop, i.e. as lowercase Latin E. Should we consult WikiProject Mathematics or so? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:44, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

This discussion has been around for quite awhile. ⇔ ChristTrekker 17:03, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Gamma is approximately equal to 1/sqrt(3)

The article talk page is for discussing article improvements, not general discussions about the topic. General discussions can be initiated at WP:RD/Math
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
$\gamma \approx {\frac {1}{\sqrt {3}}}$ The error is about 1.33 x 10 - 4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.118.170.29 (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2013‎ $s\emptyset \ \omega h{\mathbf {A} }{\rm {t}}?$ Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC) Just putting it out there, to see if there's any (deeper) meaning to it, or if it's just a coincidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.118.170.29 (talk) 22:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC) If they agreed to twenty or more significant digits, it might be worth remarking upon it. Not so for merely four digits. There are so many (simple) mathematical expressions that a coincidental agreement to four digits with something should be expected. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC) J.R., I do understand what you're trying to say... it's just that numbers don't necessarily "have to" agree to any number of digits in order for them to be `blood-related`. For instance, 0, 1 and e don't have any agreement with each other, yet the 2 in e comes from its first two terms: 0!-1 + 1!-1. Likewise, the .7 that follows doesn't have anything in common with 2, but 70% of its value it is obviously obtained by adding 2!-1 to the previous two terms. Beginning with a weak coincidence and looking for a cause for it (a "blood-relationship" as you call it) is not a line of inquiry that I would expect to be fruitful because the probability is that there is no such relationship. It is much better to simply work with the equations you have and try to derive more of them by transformations of the series, integrals, derivatives, or what-have-you. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC) So you're basically pretty certain that no other good can come of it that could provide us with deeper insight into Euler's constant, except a simple and helpful mnemonic or approximation ? No infinite sum, infinite product, nested fraction, or nested radical, etc. can ultimately be derived from it ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.113.230.8 (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC) No, I said no such thing. I know very little about the constant. I was just saying that your approach is one which I feel, based on my experience, is unlikely to work. If you want to try to transform one of the known expressions for $\gamma \,$ into an expression for ${\frac {1}{\gamma ^{2}}}-3\,$ and try to do something with that, be my guest. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:57, 19 February 2013 (UTC) Apparently it's explained by using the Gaussian quadrature for 2 points, and applying it to the integral definition of the constant. — 79.113.237.34 (talk) 03:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC) The approximation has two small integers "3" and "2" and two functions (a^b and 1/a) to get (in my opinion) a very nice approximation that is interesting for the coincidence. But it uses 4 variables. You could just write a dot and 3 slightly larger integers to get 0.03% error: .557. If 5 was the largest number possible functions (-1*a, b^a, a+b, a*b, and logb(a)) you and I would have considered interesting, and only 3 non-one integers (2, 3, 4) along with pi and e, then there are (5+5)^4=10^4 possibilities. If they were constrained to 0 to 1, then the discovery of a formula this simple and this close would have been admirable but not unexpected. But it does better than this because the combinations are not constrained 0 to 1. The exact formula uses 5 functions with the infinite sum giving it more than I allowed for your equation, and 1 constant e, so it had > 11^6 similar possibilities. (talk) 10:53, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Two more Appearances

Cramér's_conjecture#Heuristic_justification

Prime_gap#Lower_bounds — Preceding unsigned comment added by Reddwarf2956 (talk • contribs) 19:28, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Existence

I think it would be nice to include at least single proof of the existence and finiteness of the limit in the definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.103.38.103 (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree, this would be a good idea. One way I like to explain it to students is using an image similar to the first image of the article, showing that the blue area is finite by using upper and lower sum approximations to the Riemann integral of $1/x$ as a cute application of those ideas as well. I don't really have the time to write this up myself, but it would definitely make a worthy addition to the article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:20, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Euler-Mascheroni constant in probabilistic prime counting formula

The Euler-Mascheroni constant appears also in the probabilistic prime counting formula which can be represented as follows:

$\pi (x=p_{i})=\alpha .\int _{2}^{x}\prod _{i=2}^{x=p_{i}}(1-1/p_{i}).dx\ with\ \alpha \approx 1.7810292$

where $\alpha$ can be very closely approximated as:

$\alpha =e^{\gamma }\ where\ \gamma \approx 0.57721\ is\ the\ Euler-Mascheroniconstant$

The origin of this formula can be found here.

Chrisdecorte (talk) 18:48, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Is this statement correct?

Is this statement below correct?

Series of prime numbers:

${\begin{aligned}\gamma =\lim _{n\to \infty }\left(\ln n-\sum _{p\leq n}{\frac {\ln p}{p-1}}\right)\end{aligned}}.$

I just removed the reference to Mathworld because there is nothing at the location that looks like the statement above. Also, is the math correct?

It seems to be true numerically (although convergence is very slow). There's probably a clever way to get it from Mertens' theorem. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:28, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I guess then the question really is: Correct reference with proof? John W. Nicholson (talk) 23:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, knowing that it's true suggests that it should be reference-able. Obviously, a reference would be ideal. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I looked at the Mathworld reference, and it seems like the result is obtained by taking equations (15) and (17), and equating the right-hand sides, then using the geometric series expansion of p/(p-1). Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Error in product formula for $e^{\gamma }$ ?

The nth factor is said to be the (n+1)st root of an expression, but this expression appears to be a number rather than a function, so it doesn't have "roots". So what is the correct formula for the nth factor in this expression? I tried looking up the papers of Ser and Sondow referred to below the formula, but I can't find Ser's paper, and I can't find where in Sondow's paper the relevant formula is supposed to be. David9550 (talk) 10:55, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

See nth root. Sławomir
Biały 11:10, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Oops, I guess I forgot some words have multiple meanings! Thanks for the clarification. David9550 (talk) 14:36, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Formatting per WP:MSM and WP:MOSMATH#Multi-letter names

@Slawekb: I've started this section so that you can describe what your objection is to my edits. —Boruch Baum (talk) 13:32, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Boruch. Actually, the way WP:BRD works is that if you make a bold edit and it is reverted, then you are supposed to discuss. My objections are as follows. (1) The edit makes no sense grammatically "For some ⌊x⌋ representing the floor function, it is defined as the limiting difference between the harmonic series and the natural logarithm". This is very unidiomatic. The original wording should be restored. (2) The removal of the newline from the align environment is not syntactically reasonable LaTeX style. If you want formulas to display on a single line, don't use the align environment. (3) The reason the article uses $\gamma$ instead of γ is to maintain consistency between the inline displayed equations and the LaTeX equations that display on their own lines. The default sans serif γ looks very different from the LaTeX displayed. (4) None of the new typesetting was done in an MOS-compliant manner (variables were not italicized) and there was no clear improvement beyond the personal preference of one editor. (5) γ′: the prime is all but invisible. (6) It is not considered appropriate per the WP:MSM to change from one style to the other without first obtaining consensus:

• Large scale formatting changes to an article or group of articles are likely to be controversial. One should not change formatting boldly from LaTeX to HTML, nor from non-LaTeX to LaTeX without a clear improvement. Proposed changes should generally be discussed on the talk page of the article before implementation. If there will be no positive response, or if planned changes affect more than one article, consider notifying an appropriate Wikiproject, such as WP:WikiProject Mathematics for mathematical articles.

So, unless there is some clear consensus for these edits, I think we should revert back to the original untainted version. Sławomir
Biały 13:51, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Euler's constant/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

In the section on properties, in the subsection on integrals, the article says "Indefinite integrals in which". The integrals are not indefinite. Perhaps the author means improper?

Last edited at 05:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 02:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Floor function?

From the image it seems it should be ceiling function. Floor is always smaller than the original function, so this value would be negative: $\int _{1}^{\infty }\left({\frac {1}{\lfloor x\rfloor }}-{\frac {1}{x}}\right)\,dx$--Reciprocist (talk) 04:14, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Note the reciprocals. When j < x, you get 1/j > 1/x. Joule36e5 (talk) 09:36, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

abm(x)?

I am curious why this notation is used in the graphic at the head of the Generalizations section, while it is not mentioned at all in the text and seems to be redundant. A brief search on Wolfram Mathworld and the internet in general suggests that this notation is not used anywhere in the literature and may be, as far as I can tell, something that was invented by the person who created that image. Xolroc (talk) 14:51, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it's just notation. A better image could certainly be added, without the notation in the graphic. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:26, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

My main complaint about it is not that it is wrong per se, but that the abm notation doesn't seem to be used anywhere else. If it was accepted alternative notation I'd be fine with it, but the fact that it doesn't show up on Mathworld and a few google searches turn up nothing suggests that the notation is not in common use. If I could figure out how to get Mathematica to generate such an image I probably would replace it with a plot of γ_α, but for the moment I'm not able to. Xolroc (talk) 00:59, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Plot[HarmonicNumber[n, -x] + (n^x (n^(-x) - n))/(1 + x) /. n -> 1000000, {x, -4, 0}, PlotRange -> {0, 1}] This is at least sufficient for illustration purpose. Convergence is unfortunately slow around and above the minimum, but with a larger n the expression will become very slow to evaluate. Ylai (talk) 11:46, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I executed the above code and found that the result figure is different from the current one on the wiki page. The function is much more straight in the range x<-0.5, but I am not sure if it is because of the slow convergence of the function. 140.112.54.158 (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Error in formula?

@Reciprocist: I just theoretically forced Mediawiki to purge and re-render all the displayed formulas on the page, so it should probably be okay now. But if you still see an error, please put what it's displaying. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 18:41, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I still see an error instead of formula:

--Reciprocist (talk) 13:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, that's not the normal type of error that Mediawiki generates. Are you using some kind of browser plugin or different software to view the page? I have some ideas for a workaround, but I'd like to see exactly what's causing this first. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:52, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

In Pale Moon 28.7.1 and K-Meleon/Goanna the result is the same.--Reciprocist (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

So?--Reciprocist (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Order of terms in the definition

Could someone please explain to me why, when a constant is defined as "the (...) difference between A and B" (where A > B), editors apparently feel that it's better to write this as "-B + A" rather than "A - B"? I made a minor change to the definition to change

${\begin{aligned}\gamma &=\lim _{n\to \infty }\left(-\ln n+\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}\right)\\[5px]&=\int _{1}^{\infty }\left(-{\frac {1}{x}}+{\frac {1}{\lfloor x\rfloor }}\right)\,dx.\end{aligned}}$

to

${\begin{aligned}\gamma &=\lim _{n\to \infty }\left(\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}-\ln n\right)\\[5px]&=\int _{1}^{\infty }\left({\frac {1}{\lfloor x\rfloor }}-{\frac {1}{x}}\right)\,dx.\end{aligned}}$

but user 'Deacon Vorbis' - who seems to feel that he 'owns' this and other mathematical pages - reverted my change without giving a clear reason. Does anyone else feel that "A - B" is clearer than "-B + A"? Rangatira80 (talk) 07:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Your version is ambiguous, as

$\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}-\ln n$

can be read either as

$\sum _{k=1}^{n}\left({\frac {1}{k}}-\ln n\right)$

or as

$\left(\sum _{k=1}^{n}{\frac {1}{k}}\right)-\ln n.$

D.Lazard (talk) 08:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make in my edit summary, thanks. But Rangatira80, "... but user 'Deacon Vorbis' - who seems to feel that he 'owns' this and other mathematical pages ..." is a borderline personal attack completely out of nowhere. If you think I have a pattern of violating WP:OWN, please feel free to bring it up with me on my own talk page, but otherwise, please leave it out. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:24, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Citation style

@Mikeblas: If you want to do some work on the references in this article, and you've done a great job so far, all parenthetical citations should be converted to footnotes. Parenthetical citations were deprecated sometime after I did my adjustments. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:00, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

"Log" vs "Ln"

I think "ln" is a better notation than "log" for the following reasons:

• Consistency: At present this article uses both log and ln.
• Clarity: ln is unambiguous contrary to log.
• Compliance with standards: ln is probably more widely used, and recommended by ISO.

The only argument in favor of "log" seems to be that "log" is more accepted in the field of number theory. I think this argument weighs less than the previous two, all the more so since this article is not really about number theory.2A01:CB00:A34:1000:ED0E:D7C1:D5BD:64BC (talk) 14:00, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Euler's constant

Examination of the references cited in the article, and the entries in the "further reading" and "external links" sections indicates that the substantial majority of them call this number "Euler's constant", with "Euler–Mascheroni constant" being rare. This confirms my own impressions, and also what I have found by internet searches. γ is normally referred to in English as "Euler's constant", rarely as the "Euler–Mascheroni constant" Nobody seems to have advanced any compelling reason for making this article an exception to the normal practice of using the name most commonly used and understood in English. (To avoid any possible misunderstanding, e is normally called "Euler's number", not "Euler's constant".) I shall therefore move this article from the title "Euler–Mascheroni constant" to "Euler's constant". JBW (talk) 21:36, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Short description

Sapphorain‎ started an edit war by insisting to have "Mathematical constant" as a short description. This is simply a definition of the second word of the title, and so, does not fulfill any objective of a short description, and breaks WP:SDNOTDEF ("avoid duplicating information that is already in the title"). In particular, it does not disambiguates this article from Euler's number, which is another mathematical constant.

The short descriptions that Sapphorain‎ reverted was firstly "Mathematical constant relating logarithm and harmonic series", which is effectively too long (60 characters). The second reverted version is "Relates logarithm and harmonic series" (37 characters). It respects WP:SDSHORT. It fulfills completely the purpose of short descriptions:

• For readers not interested in mathematics, the terms "logarithm" seems sufficient for saying that the article is not for them.
• For possibly interested readers, it clearly indicates the area of mathematics that is involved.
• It disambiguates from Euler's number, which is another mathematical constant with a similar name.

So, I'll restore this short description, since the balance between arguments is clearly in its favor. D.Lazard (talk) 13:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Also this is really in the spirit of WP:SDEXAMPLES, as it is naturally read as

Euler's constant
$\qquad$Relates logarithm and harmonic series

D.Lazard (talk) 14:05, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I maintain that « Relates logarithm and harmonic series » is an incorrect and cryptic hint to what the described object might be. It is incorrect because gamma is just one of the terms of a relation including the logarithm and a partial sum of the harmonic series: this doesn’t confer to it the exclusive property of « relating » the two notions. But what is much worse is that it is cryptic, because it doesn’t include an essential information: that it is a constant. It is like describing Cicero with the statement «  Opposed the Catilinean conspiracy », without mentioning the essential fact that he was a Roman statesman.--Sapphorain (talk) 15:19, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

"it doesn’t include an essential information: that it is a constant": This information is in the article title. No need to repeat it in the short description. For the other points, let wait the opinion of other editors, and if other editors do not give their opinion here, ask at WT:WPM where a long discussion occurred recently on short descriptions in mathematics. D.Lazard (talk) 17:42, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

transcendental :( I hate infinite decimals :( :( :(

h t t p s://v i x r a .org/pdf/1208.0009v3.pdf#:~:text=%3A%20The%20Euler-,Mascheroni%20constant%20is%20irrational. (remove the spaces because of blacklist)

TRANSCENDENTAL I am a Green Bee (talk) 14:55, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

This article is blatantly wrong. Apparently the author ignores that an infinite limit is neither rational neither irrational. D.Lazard (talk) 15:52, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Formula

Is the beta function fomula given in "relation to the gamma function" here:

$${\begin{aligned}\gamma &=\lim _{n\to \infty }\left({\frac {\Gamma \left({\frac {1}{n}}\right)\Gamma (n+1)\,n^{1+{\frac {1}{n}}}}{\Gamma \left(2+n+{\frac {1}{n}}\right)}}-{\frac {n^{2}}{n+1}}\right)\\&=\lim \limits _{m\to \infty }\sum _{k=1}^{m}{m \choose k}{\frac {(-1)^{k}}{k}}\log {\big (}\Gamma (k+1){\big )}.\end{aligned}}$$

missing a minus sign? When I inputted the equation into Desmos, it converged to negative $\gamma$ instead of $\gamma$. 77551enpassant (talk) 16:57, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

New sections: Relation to triangular numbers and Convergence

Hello everyone,

I've been working on revising the "Properties" section to include the Ramanujan identity and information about the convergence properties of gamma. To avoid cluttering this talk page and to facilitate detailed feedback, I've drafted the proposed changes in my sandbox. Please view the drafts here: Relation to triangular numbers and Convergence.

I welcome all suggestions and comments to ensure that the content meets Wikipedia guidelines and that it's accurate and clearly explained. I would be grateful if you could share your feedback and thoughts here on this Talk page.

Thank you for taking the time to review and for your valuable insights!

Best regards. Twoxili (talk) 22:50, 3 May 2024 (UTC)