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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What was the result of Ramanujan clinging to his cultural practices?
(a) He brought Indian culture to English intellectuals.
(b) He taught English students how to cook Indian dishes.
(c) He remained an outsider.
(d) He generated fear and hostility in those around him.

3. How does Kanigel describe English society from Ramanujan's point-of-view?
(a) Effete.
(b) Rarefied.
(c) Malicious.
(d) Homogenous.

4. What was Ramanujan interested in in this value?
(a) Its infinite nature.
(b) Underlying properties.
(c) The constant's irrationality.
(d) The constant's practical value.

5. Who was Neville?
(a) Ramanujan's Tutor.
(b) The dean at the university where Ramanujan was doing his research.
(c) Ramanujan's ambassador to Hardy.
(d) Hardy's ambassador to Ramanujan.

Short Answer Questions

1. In his letter to Hardy, what was the importance of the thing Ramanujan claimed to have discovered?

2. What cultural practice did Ramanujan insist on, in Kanigel's account?

3. What other Indian thinker does Kanigel compare Ramanujan's experience with?

4. What did Ramanujan work out in his research on constants?

5. What did Ramanujan's Master Theorem attempt to do?

Short Essay Questions

1. What cultural practices did Ramanujan hold on to from India?

2. What problems did Ramanujan have on account of his Indian cultural practices?

3. What was Ramanujan's interest in pi?

4. What problem kept Ramanujan from coming to England, as Hardy hoped he would?

5. What was Ramanujan's relationship with Cambridge after he left for India?

6. How was Ramanujan treated on his return to India?

7. What is a formalist in mathematical thinking?

8. What did Ramanujan discover when P. C. Mahalanobis read him a puzzle one evening?

9. What did Hardy do with Ramanujan's letter?

10. In what way was Ramanujan's experience of England similar to Ghandi's?

(see the answer keys)

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