Which one result in mathematics has surprised you the most?
mathematicssurprising-resultsset-theorycommunity-poll
Abstraction: Community poll on most surprising mathematical results
Key points:
- Math Stack Exchange community question asking for the most surprising mathematical results.
- The Banach-Tarski Paradox is cited as the question's motivating example: a unit ball can be decomposed into finitely many disjoint parts, then reassembled via rotation and translation into two complete balls of the same radius.
- The paradox relies on the Axiom of Choice to construct non-measurable sets; the pieces have no well-defined volume.
- Voting system is used to surface the results most widely found surprising by the mathematical community.
Connections: Set Theory · Mathematics · Paradoxes
Source: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2949/which-one-result-in-maths-has-surprised-you-the-most