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Michael Hardy
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A proof of $\displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac 1{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}6$ is described in a youtube video that I may find and post later today, after it appeared in a paper that I may cite here later today, so I'll let this present posting serve as a reminder to get back to this when I have more time. (As I thought might happen, someone beat me to the URL for the video. See the comment below.)

This involves a one-to-two correspondence (so just construe "bi-" in "bijective" as referring to that "two").

It goes like this. First observe that the proposition to be proved is easily seen to be equivalent to $\displaystyle \sum_{\text{odd } n\,\in\,\mathbb Z} \frac 1{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}4 $.

Next, approximate this last sum by the sum of squares of the reciprocals of the distances from $0$ of certain points on the circle of circumference $2^n$ that touches the line $y=0$ in the plane $(x,y)\in\mathbb R^2$ at the point $(0,0)$. Those specified points are the those whose distance measured along the circle from $(0,0)$ is an odd integer.

The central lemma is that if $n$ increases by $1$, then that sum does not change. This reduces the problem to the the case $n=1$, and in that case the sum is $\pi^2/4$.

The proof of the lemma is from secondary-school geometry: Through each of the specified points draw the line through the very top of the circle. That line intersects the next circle, the case $n+1$, at two points. Show that the sum of the squares of the reciprocals of the distances from those two points to $(0,0)$ is equal to the reciprocal of the square of the distance to $(0,0)$ from the point you started with. $\quad\blacksquare$

Michael Hardy
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