ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Ramanujan sum

Imagine you have a bunch of toys in a room and you want to know how many there are in total. One way to figure that out is to count each toy one by one, but that can take a long time. Another way is to group the toys into sets of the same type, like teddy bears, cars, and dolls, and then count how many sets there are of each type.

Ramanujan sum is a fancy way of grouping numbers into sets and then adding up those sets to find the total. Let's say we want to find the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 10. Instead of adding them up one by one, we can group them into sets of two, like this:

(1 + 10) + (2 + 9) + (3 + 8) + (4 + 7) + (5 + 6)

These sets add up to 11 each, so we can just multiply 11 by the number of sets, which is 5, to get the total:

11 x 5 = 55

That's the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 10 using Ramanujan sum! It's a shortcut that helps us add up numbers quickly and efficiently.
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