3.14159265358979323846
Tomorrow in the States is the National Pi day. Clever - 14th March in US terms is 3/14 which bears some resemblance (at the initial stages) to Pi.
Everyone knows, or should know, that if you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter you get a number which is on the one hand, but one the other a number which has never been properly written down. A computer in Japan has apparently calculated pi to 2 billion digits but there are an infinite number of digits yet to be calculated.
It's one of those wonders of nature, of maths and of philosophy that I feel constitute one of the major arguments for the existence of God, the spiritual being or whomever. It's got that hint of weirdness as well which makes it that much more interesting.
The history of the number (or "Life of Pi" if you like) is like one of those awful (but compelling) Dan Brown novels. The origins of pi are believed to have come from Babylon in around the 20th Century BC (that itself is a bit of a headfuck) when the architects there, especially keen on geometry, discovered that the division of the circumference of a circle by its diameter always produced a constant. It is referred to in the Bible and has been studied by Indian, Chinese and Persian mathematicians. A Welshman gave it its name. And yet no-one has been able to write the number in full. A true mystery...
Everyone knows, or should know, that if you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter you get a number which is on the one hand, but one the other a number which has never been properly written down. A computer in Japan has apparently calculated pi to 2 billion digits but there are an infinite number of digits yet to be calculated.
It's one of those wonders of nature, of maths and of philosophy that I feel constitute one of the major arguments for the existence of God, the spiritual being or whomever. It's got that hint of weirdness as well which makes it that much more interesting.
The history of the number (or "Life of Pi" if you like) is like one of those awful (but compelling) Dan Brown novels. The origins of pi are believed to have come from Babylon in around the 20th Century BC (that itself is a bit of a headfuck) when the architects there, especially keen on geometry, discovered that the division of the circumference of a circle by its diameter always produced a constant. It is referred to in the Bible and has been studied by Indian, Chinese and Persian mathematicians. A Welshman gave it its name. And yet no-one has been able to write the number in full. A true mystery...
posted by Akash at 1:49 PM
4 Comments:
I love that there's a Pi Day here. The math undergrads at Harvard celebrated with two contests: pie eating (how much pie in 3.14 minutes), and recitation. The winner recited pi to 866 digits! The world record holder got to 80-some thousand.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512104
Forget that. Some high schooler did 10 times better.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/ap_on_sc/pi_prodigy
They have a day for everything here...
Yes a day for everything - if only they were all bank (national) holidays!
I too love that there is a Pi Day but am slightly perturbed by the vision of nerdy college students consuming vast amoutns of pie...
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