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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. What was Ramanujan's intention when he returned home?
(a) To stay in India for a few years.
(b) Never to return to England.
(c) To teach in India.
(d) To bring his wife back to England.

2. What did Hardy decide after conferring with John Littlewood?
(a) That Ramanujan was unstable.
(b) That Ramanujan was a small thinker.
(c) That Ramanujan was a genius.
(d) That Ramanujan was dangerous.

3. What was it that offended Ramanujan when he invited some friends to dinner?
(a) The friends wanted to use silverware.
(b) The friends criticized his cooking.
(c) The men used salt.
(d) The women declined a third helping.

4. What were Ramanujan and Hardy looking for in their work on partitions?
(a) A way to bridge partitions.
(b) A theorem that demonstrated how partitions operate in series.
(c) A point at which partitions broke down for prime numbers.
(d) A way to define the number of partitions precisely.

5. Who developed an exact solution to the question of partitions?
(a) Euler.
(b) Later mathematicians.
(c) Hardy.
(d) Ramanujan.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are partitions in math?

2. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan's dress?

3. What did the divergent series 1+2+3+4+5... add up to in Ramanujan's notebooks?

4. What practice does Kanigel say Ramanujan had difficulty adjusting to in England?

5. How does Kanigel characterize Ramanujan's theorems and formulas?

Short Essay Questions

1. Ramanujan kept extensive notes of his thinking. What was in Ramanujan's notebooks, and how much of his work was valuable, according to Kanigel?

2. Describe Ramanujan's trip to England.

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

4. Describe the decline of Ramanujan's health.

5. What has been the impact of Ramanujan's work?

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

7. What is a formalist in mathematical thinking?

8. What was Ramanujan's decline like, and death?

9. What was Ramanujan's interest in pi?

10. What accolades did Ramanujan receive for his work?

(see the answer keys)

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