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Of course they may have been doing things in somewhat different fashion than we imagine; and this is related to Grandi's series (your classmate Estelon Eastham mentioned this the other day; Grandi was born in 1671): \[ A = 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + \ldots \] Of course the series is divergent by the divergence test! But it doesn't mean that it's useless....
I have your classmate Caeser Bao in another course, and in it he used the Grandi series to prove that $0 = 1$:
0=1 0=0+0+0+0+0+0+... 0=(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+... 0=1+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+... 0=1+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0... 0=1
I was quite surprised, of course, because I always thought that $0=2$:
0=2 0=0+0+0+0+0+0+... 0=(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+... 0=1+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+... 0=1+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1)+... 0=1+1+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+(-1+1)+... 0=1+1+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0... 0=2
We will often turn to the tests we consider today for the answer.