A Piece of Pi
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Anyway, today is Pi Day. at 1:59 it was 3.14.15.9 that magical mystical number that continues to be the center of mathematical beauty. Over at MSNBC's Cosmic Log there was a good post about it with some good links. By the way, using a BIG computer and LOTS of hours "they" have computed PI to a trillion places. As someone put it, the beauty and mystery of nature.
I also read over at Pi Day that you can probably find your birthdate in the numbers of Pi. I tried it on the calculation of Pi to a million places and sure enough it was there both with using just "48" for the year (mdyy) and "1948" (mdyyyy). The longer one with "1948 was only there once. The other well over 20 times. However using (mmddyy) was not there. What a wonderful waste of time.
And, appropriately perhaps, today is also Einstein's birthday.
It's a real Geeks' Day.
1 comment:
Oh, and so much of God's provision for order yet surprise in nature is evident with pi. It shows up in the normal distribution (aka bell curve), it shows up in the prime numbers in weird ways, and it has very interesting representations with beautiful patterns dating from 500 years ago.
And somehow the mnemonic at the end of this page seems appropriate, given your line of work.
Full disclosure: I never celebrate pi day.
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