Pi Day Extraordinaire 107
First time accepted submitter DrTJ writes Today is Pi day. This year is a bit more extraordinary as it is 3/14/15 (in American date format). To celebrate, USA Today has posted a number of videos of kids reciting Pi, one of them to 8,784 digits. The Washington Post highlights the story of a couple who decided to make it their special day. "Donahue, 33, a Legal Aid attorney, fell for Karmel’s geeky side as soon as they met. On a beach vacation with her friends in 2012, a psychic told her, 'You are about to meet your soulmate.' Three days later, she walked into Kostume Karaoke night at Solly’s Tavern along the U Street corridor and saw a man onstage croaking out the Backstreet Boys’s 'I Want It That Way.' By the end of the night, he would be serenading her with Cake’s 'The Distance' — the song the DJ will play when they cut the pie."
Total failure on samzenpus part (Score:3, Funny)
Total failure on samzenpus part to post this at 9:26
Re: 14/3/2015 is not pi day... (Score:2, Informative)
...for the rest of the world that counts dates logically
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...for the rest of the world that counts dates logically
Came here to say this but you beat me to it. So I'll just add that if we're going to use the American system of dating, (and not add in the hours, minutes, and seconds), then Pi Day is NEXT year. Pi rounded to four decimal places is 3.1416.
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So 31 April?
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Re: 14/3/2015 is no more logical (Score:2)
yyyy/mm/dd has the advantage that it sorts correctly. dd/mm doesn't, especially if you drop leading zeros.
Hope you've all survived the Ides of March (Score:2)
The Roman calendar was really a hopeless mess of leftover lunarcy. Some months the Ides are the 15th, most the 13th, kalends were the first, and you counted dates forward to the next ides, kalends, or nones.
Pi Day 2015: meet the man who invented Ï (Score:5, Informative)
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The real mystery is why the diameter was chosen instead of the more logical ratio of the circumference to the radius. Euclid would not approve.
Why is the radius "more logical"? It depends on the practical use of the relationship. It seems "more logical" to use a radius as a primary circle measurement if you're using a modern mathematical definition of a set of points equidistant (by the radius) from a central point. And it seems logical to adopt this measurement if you constructed a circle in this manner.
On the other hand, if you are confronted with an existing circle and wish to determine the circumference, measuring the diameter is more str
Another holiday (Score:4, Insightful)
I find this one particular irrational.
Re:Another holiday (Score:5, Informative)
I find this one particular irrational.
Not just irrational, but transcendental as well. A rational reason to celebrate today is that it is Albert Einstein's birthday.
How Irrational (Score:1)
"a psychic told her, 'You are about to meet your soulmate.'"
How... irrational.
Wait, why are they getting hitched on Pi da... oohhh. I get it now.
Friends of a friend got married yesterday (Score:2)
They were both geeks, picked Pi Day as a day to get married. (I doubt they were the ones mentioned in the article, but I don't know them.)
Friends of mine had a Pi Day brunch yesterday. It didn't start at 9:26am, because that was just way too early, so they decided to end it at 9:26pm if anybody was still there. We reset one of the clocks to Eastern time so we could do 9:26pm EDT, cheer, etc.
Maybe for the English, but what about the world? (Score:1)
For this reason, I found it a little dumb to consider this the "Pi day" : https://thebehaviorallab.files... [wordpress.com]
For me (french), you could say that Pi day is April 31, 2015 (31/4/15).
Re:Maybe for the English, but what about the world (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't that only true in a Romulan leap year?
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That would be really cool if April had 31 days.
Isn't that only true in a Romulan leap year?
Omg yes you're completly right. Silly mistake and it mean it would be January 3, 2041 (3/1/41) instead. Oh well..
22nd July (Score:2)
Re:Maybe for the English, but what about the world (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe for the English, but what about the world?
For me (french), you could say that Pi day is April 31, 2015 (31/4/15).
Why for the English? We write the date in the same way: dd/mm[/yy]. It makes sense for fans of ISO 8601 and the Japanses who use big endian [yy/]mm/dd and of course the Americans who use the nonsensical middle-endian format mm/dd[/yy].
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"Today is Fourteen March."
Even fewer letters!
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We Americans write it that way because that's the way we say it. Compare: "Today is March fourteenth." "Today is the fourteenth of March." Four words are more efficient that six words, and it just sounds more natural in speech.
Real life example:
P.S. The USA is not the world, and time might be a concept but...
Oh the irony! (Score:2)
We Americans write it that way because that's the way we say it.
Except that you don't always! You use the American date format most of the time except when referring to "the fourth of July" then, or all the times, you always use the English format.
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Tau Day (Score:1)
Pi is wrong.
True mathematics nerds will celebrate on June 28, 2031 [tauday.com]
Hatsune Miku (Score:3)
Hatsune Miku sings 1000 digits of Pi! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
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That's the short "radio" version. The hour-long 10,000 digit version I think has greater impact. :-)
I hate Pi Day. (Score:1)
So much. It's just a naturally occurring number, not even particularly special. It doesn't commemorate anything. It's the exact same thing as all of the stoners going "OMG! It's 4:20 LOL!"
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So much. It's just a naturally occurring number, not even particularly special.
It is this year. It was Pi to ten digits at 09:26:53 this morning.
Re: I hate Pi Day. (Score:1)
Only if you arbitrarily place and then edit the digits used. Non-standard, drop leading 20 and leading 0.
Childish.
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There was a good reason for 4:20 (though not particularly for 4/20.) It was when all of the Waldoes were done after-school activities and could get together and smoke before going home or riding bikes up and down the mountain or whatever.
ISO 8601 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed. And I'll be celebrating Pi Day on July 22.
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There's only 12 months in a year and ISO 8601 only allows "-" for the separator.
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It never gets old I tell ya, humorless jerks coming into a thread and crapping in the punch bowl.
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Oh, sure, who doesn't like to hear this?Between this, and "metric system is better lectures" makes me feel small. Almost makes me overlook that fact that none of these wise-asses would exist, except for us.
Re:ISO 8601 (Score:5, Informative)
You "really hate" moving the year from the start to the finish?
I know I do. For two reasons:
Year at the front in YYYY-mm-dd format (with leading zeros on single digit months and days) lets you sort sort dates as text without having to do anything extra. That's more than a little bit convenient in a LOT of situations.
The other issue with mm-dd-YYYY is that is indistinguishable from dd-mm-YYYY for a stupidly large number of dates; and both versions are in common use -in english speaking countries (US is mm/dd/yyyy; UK is dd/mm/yyyy so its a nightmare.) I've seen documents with both formats used interchangeably.
If you see YYYY-nn-mm you KNOW its Year-month-day, because nobody anywhere ever uses YYYY-day-month.
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Now take that to the next step...
When you use the format YYMMDDHHMMSS.nn as I have done for decades, sorting remains easy and you require fewer characters/bytes/keystrokes. Why slash or hyphenate? Use as many digits as necessary but always include at least the year and month so that your meaning is clear. At a glance you can see that you are looking at a date, You won't have any ambiguity in most cases. I have hundreds of files (already in March) labelled with 15 followed by 01, 02 or 03. I don't expect to
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Is that big-endian or little-endian?
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Nope, it's 2015-03-14 in the sane world.
Keep your nonsense date format to yourself, it's almost as bad as the American one.
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It's 14/3/2015 in the sane world.
Nope, it's 2015-03-14 in the sane world.
How do you say it? 3/14/2015 goes along with how Americans say dates: "March third, Twenty Fifteen." I suppose the European way, 14/3/2015, with its nice descending specificity, corresponds to saying "The fourteenth of March, Twenty Fifteen," or even as I've heard it said, "Fourteen March, Twenty Fifteen."
But in normal conversation do you say anything like 2015-03-14, like, "I will see you again on Twenty Fifteen, March 14"?
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People don't use the year in normal, vocal conversations.
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It's 14/3/2015 in the sane world.
14 has no meaning outside of the month. 14 literally means the 14th day of the month. The month is the context. The fourteenth day of what? March. So when people say dates, it is perfectly normal to begin with the context and then the day. "What's the date?" "It's the month of March, and we are in the 14th day of it."
Why not then begin with the year, since that is the even broader context? "The year is 2015, in the month of March, on the 14th day." Because when people make appointments with each other, the
Japan! (Score:2)
Don't forget that today is also Oppai Day!
Trivia (Score:1)
Who cares.
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Other people. Why does that so offend you that you actually had to go out of your way to let people know that you don't care?
Happy Birthday Eli (Score:2)
and a happy birthday to my nephew Eli
but I am not sure if he still reads slashdot
Pi is 3.1416 (Score:1)
Good try, but Pi is 3.1416, not 3.1415.
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Pi is exactly 3!
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3.1416 is an approximation produced by rounding. 3.1415 is an approximation produced by truncation.
Both are accurate enough for most purposes.
My bank pin number... (Score:4, Interesting)
... is the last four digits of pi.
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My pin number is the last 11 digits.
Don't ask me, seems pretty irrational to have such a large number for a pin.
Today... 3-14-15... (Score:1)
No, it's Don Mclean day (Score:1)