an irreducible integral of despond

That's the Euler Formula at work:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EulerFormula.html

e^ix = cos x + i sin x

And he's quoting a special case of the Euler Formula where x = pi, and since sin pi=0, you get e^i*pi = cos pi = -1.

(Yeah, I had to look this up somewhat.)

--LAN3 Sun Dec 19 14:18:24 2004

e^(pi*i) = -1 is one of my math professor's favorite equation, probably why he teaches Complex Analysis...I'm not really looking forward to that class next semester.

--Candi Sun Dec 19 23:08:50 2004

I haven't even read past the first sentence, and I run into esoteria. Amazing!

--Mr. Lex Mon Dec 20 10:35:59 2004

That 'whoosh' was the sound of the highway over my head.
But this IS interesting!

--kluless Mon Dec 20 14:57:09 2004

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