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Wednesday Is Pi Day
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Mar 12, 2007 04:21 AM
from the secant-tangent-cosine-sine dept.
from the secant-tangent-cosine-sine dept.
mrbluze points us to an AP writeup on the upcoming Pi Day — 3-14 (which some will observe at 1:59 pm). The article notes: "[T]he world record [for reciting the number Pi] belongs to Chao Lu, a Chinese chemistry student, who rattled off 67,890 digits over 24 hours in 2005. It took 26 video tapes to submit to Guinness," and mentions in passing a Japanese mental health counselor who last fall recited 100,000 digits, but did not choose to submit proof to the record book.
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I live in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Umm, why?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh OK. I always use YYYY-MM-DD
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
Here at my office we use both the European and International numerican dates forms, depending on the sitation:
European: DD/MM/YYYY
International: YYYY/MM/DD
As you can the units of time (days, months, years) ascend or descend in order e.g. in the European format you go from the smallest unit (days) through the midsized (months) up to the largest (years). In the International format the same descends from largest first.
But with the American format you start with the month, then go to the smallest, then to the largest. It just seems totally illogical to me, anyone know why it's done that way?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmm my first rational thought of 2002... yipee!
Tom
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
As opposed to, says, french "J'ai un rendez-vous le 14 mars" or spanish "tengo una cita el 14 de marzo". Might be the reason...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Many US government forms in fact use the DD-MM-YYYY format. If you're flying into the US and are filling out immigration-related forms and hear a muttered curse word followed by the sound of a pen crossing out some numbers at the bottom and rewriting, realize
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Britain originally used day, month, year, then for a short while used month, day, year, and finally reverted to the original form (day, month, year) which was revived around 1900; the USA chose to remain with month, day, year, but did originally use day, month, year as the British did."
Interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...or listing domain names as science.slashdot.org instead of the logical order org.slashdot.science.
Re:I live in Europe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We can join in, we just need to redefine Pi as 1.43
Well, if you'd be willing to take King George off our hands, he's become quite good at redefining science, so I'm sure he could make that change for you.
To Celebrate.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To Celebrate.... (Score:5, Funny)
3.14159265*2.71828183
That would be the diet version, only 8 significant digits
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
At least in a case insensitive world.
Perhaps a typo? (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't that read "Mental health patient ?"
None the less, that is still very impressive. I wish I had a memory for that kind of thing.
Re:Perhaps a typo? (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. Then I could use it for something useful.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps a typo? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
naah, reciting a milliopns digits of pi is easy. the trick is, not to begin at the beginning....
dave
Perhaps this kind of counselor ;) (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it's one kind of counselling...
Parent
Crazyness (Score:3, Funny)
That's just plain crazy!
Re:Crazyness (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Crazyness (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Obligatory quote (Score:3, Funny)
In rhymes inapt the great
Immortal Syracusan rivaled nevermore
Who in his wondrous law
Passed on before
Left men his guidance
How to circles mensurate
Continuing to 100000 or so is left as an exercise to the reader.
The joke is that in writing this out I have to remind myself, as a non-American English user, that "rivaled" is spelt like that, and to do that I have to recite the numeric value of pi up to that point...go figure
Re:Obligatory quote (Score:4, Informative)
One common mnemonic (which I've seen attributed to Isaac Asimov) is "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!" If you want to get really fancy, the Wikipedia entry lists a full sonnet, in more-or-less iambic pentameter:
Now I defy a tenet gallantly
Of circle canon law: these integers
Importing circles' quotients are, we see,
Unwieldy long series of cockle burs
Put all together, get no clarity;
Mnemonics shan't describeth so reformed
Creating, with a grammercy plainly,
A sonnet liberated yet conformed.
Strangely, the queer'st rules I manipulate
Being followéd, do facilitate
Whimsical musings from geometric bard.
This poesy, unabashed as it's distressed,
Evolvéd coherent - a simple test,
Discov'ring poetry no numerals jarred.
Admittedly, it's not a very good sonnet, but, hey, what do you want?
Parent
To remember pi, just memorize this post! (Score:3, Funny)
monopodal Monopoly. (Score:2)
Name that (probably inaccurate) quote.
100000 digits? (Score:2)
I don't think the total would be more than a thousand digits
How do they do it?
Re:100000 digits? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are plenty of memory techniques. Didn't you know there is a world championship in remembering things? See for instance http://www.worldmemorychampionship.com/ [worldmemor...onship.com] or http://www.worldmemorychallenge.com/ [worldmemorychallenge.com].
If you want a tip, here's something a read in a book by a Norwegian memory world champion, Oddbjørn By:
*You probably want less locations, so you can visit the same one under different conditions. E.g. during day / night / rain / snow / heavy winds... we're down to 50,000 locations already!
Parent
Video tapes? Oooh , risky (Score:5, Funny)
1337 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:1337 (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
1:59 pm? (Score:3, Funny)
It can also be observed at 3:49 a.m., which is then 0.159 of a day; it's also much easier to have a minute's respectful silence at 3:49 am
on another note.. (Score:5, Funny)
This deep down? (Score:3, Funny)
Only on slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, the evolution of math geekiness... (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly, that fall in my frosh year at university, reciting pi turned up as a big contest among the first year math students. 2,500 was enough to take the crown at university also.
There is actually a very efficient way of memorizing strings of random digits one you get the hang of it - the key is groups of 5. The technique works well enough that 25 years later I still remember 500 digits. And the workout I gave my memory skills serves me well today still. Strings of digits are simple - tell me your phone number just once, etc.
100,000 - now that's impressive. I can tell you from experience, that memory will serve him well in chemistry, especially organic. More power to him!
Einstein's birthday... (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we can?
Because he never remembers my birthday?
Because we would have had to know it in the first place to be able to remeber it?