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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How much of Ramanujan's work did Hardy believe was sound and original?
(a) Almost all of it.
(b) One to two thirds.
(c) Half to three quarters.
(d) Five to ten percent.

2. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan's dress?
(a) A unique brand of slovenliness all his own.
(b) Traditional Indian dress.
(c) English dress.
(d) A hybrid of Indian and English.

3. How does Kanigel say Ramanujan passed his time on the ship?
(a) Sick.
(b) Reading novels.
(c) Playing games.
(d) Working feverishly.

4. How did Ramanujan spend all his time on returning to India?
(a) With his wife.
(b) At the school where he taught.
(c) With his parents.
(d) On math.

5. What did Ramanujan discover when his friend Mahalanobis read a puzzle from the paper?
(a) A proof to all problems like that puzzle.
(b) The constant that resolves series to prime numbers.
(c) The mystical nature of numbers.
(d) The value of pi.

6. What value did Ramanujan work with at Cambridge?
(a) Chaitin's constant.
(b) Avogadro's number.
(c) Pi.
(d) Real numbers.

7. What did Hardy try to arrange after receiving Ramanujan's letter?
(a) Ramanujan's passage to England.
(b) A scholarship for Ramanujan in India.
(c) A teaching position for Ramanujan.
(d) A meeting with Ramanujan.

8. How did Ramanujan respond to Hardy's request for proofs?
(a) He would send them if Hardy would help him financially.
(b) He dragged his feet about sending them.
(c) He said he could not produce them.
(d) He sent them immediately.

9. How long did the trip from India to England take?
(a) Two months.
(b) A month.
(c) Three weeks.
(d) Six weeks.

10. To what extent does Kanigel say Ramanujan blended in with Cambridge society?
(a) He remained hostile to it.
(b) Not very much.
(c) Thoroughly.
(d) He was always in between cultures.

11. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan as a mathematical thinker?
(a) Classicist.
(b) Radical.
(c) Constructivist.
(d) Formalist.

12. What did Ramanujan and Hardy develop for working with partitions?
(a) The circle method.
(b) A refinement of Euler's suggestion.
(c) A precise method for determining partitions for prime numbers.
(d) Nested square roots.

13. Who was Leonard Euler?
(a) Hardy's protégé.
(b) A brilliant mathematician to whom Hardy compared Ramanujan.
(c) A teacher at Cambridge.
(d) Ramanujan's tutor.

14. In his letter to Hardy, what was the importance of the thing Ramanujan claimed to have discovered?
(a) It had been a mystery for years.
(b) It was already common knowledge.
(c) It was just being discovered simultaneously at other math departments.
(d) No one under thirty had even tried it.

15. What practice does Kanigel say Ramanujan had difficulty adjusting to in England?
(a) English cooking.
(b) Afternoon tea.
(c) Wearing shoes.
(d) Speaking English.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the doctor's diagnosis of Ramanujan's illness?

2. Who was absent from the dock when Ramanujan's ship came in?

3. What does Kanigel say was Ramanujan's greatest talent?

4. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan when he returned to India?

5. Who did Ramanujan stay with in England?

(see the answer keys)

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