Check this cool thing out. Seriously. Don’t let the fact that it’s math stop you from checking out. It’s really amazing, and you don’t need any math knowledge to know what’s going on.

The question is–can you sum an infinite amount of numbers? Well, sure you can. We definitely know that , where by the dots we mean we’re adding forever. But the real question is, can you sum an infinite amount of numbers and get a number that isn’t infinity?

(Oh, and if you’re like, “Oh check it out I’m hot shit I know the answer to this question already–I’m such a hot shot because I took calculus” we get it. You’re amazing. Go on to something more fun. I suggest this video which uses number theory to prove . That is also really cool, and gives a good insight into the actual research I’m doing).

But no matter. I’m going to tell you the answer is yes, you can sum an infinite amount of numbers and get a finite number. Specifically, I’m going to show that .

But in math what is amazing is not just the facts (which are really neat) but what is most interesting is why they’re true.

So to see why it’s true, let’s take a box.

What a boring thing for a box to say. If the box is going to be living, why not it have say something interesting?

There we go. That’s a nice, relatable box. Anyway, let’s take half of the box and color it red. This means a total of of the box is red, but the box is still postmodern as ever.

Great! Now in total we have of this relatable box covered. Now, let’s take half of the remaining black part of the box, and let’s color half of what’s remaining in red. This would be half of a half, which is .

Right now, this hip box has colored in red. And if we cover half of the leftover black and color it red, we’ll be coloring half of half of half, which adds red to our box that says what we’re all thinking.

And if we color half of the remaining black? Then we get colored, with an even more relatable attitude.

Now here’s the kicker. If we kept coloring in half of the remaining black forever, we would be coloring of the square in. But use your geometric intuition–if you were always coloring in half of the box, what would you end up having colored in? The whole box. (If you don’t believe it, ask yourself: Which point on the box won’t get colored?) This is why and why just because there are an infinite amount of numbers doesn’t mean they add to infinity.

Infinite sums hide many patterns in mathematics. For example, using advanced math, you can prove that and can even give insight into the very very crazy formula (what?!). I hope I didn’t say anything stupid in this post that I’ll regret later.