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Wednesday Is Pi Day
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.
And of course, the best way to celebrate is to eat PIE!
It's only actually 'Pi Day' for a limited number of people (Specifically, those in the United States). The rest of the world uses little-endian (dd/mm/(yy)yy) or, as is more appropriate for us geeks, big-endian (yyyy/mm/dd).
The same reason an American gallon/pint is not the same as a British gallon and is certainly not metric. Americans just like to do things differently, there need not be any logical justification for it.
Well, it was formed from people who came from Europe. So if you want to point fingers you need only look into a mirror.
Mmm my first rational thought of 2002... yipee!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's to do with the order of the platforms you stand on when you are awarded in some sporting event. The second is to the far left, the first is in the centre, and the third is to the far right.
Trust Americans to associate everything in life with sport.
*ducks*
Precisely?
...or listing domain names as science.slashdot.org instead of the logical order org.slashdot.science.
-Raphaël
The date format MM/DD/YYYY is because of how we say it. Americans (I don't know about elsewhere) when said comes out month, day, year. For example, if on Pi day someone asked me the date, I would say March 14, 2007. Hence why our date abbreviation is in that order. Do people in Europe say the 14th of March when asked?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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?
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
The American way is original, or at least it was what was in use when the American colonies were part of the British empire. Newspapers in the colonies from the late 1700s use "January 1st, 1776" and the like. I couldn't tell you when the UK changed.
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 that the person next to you is probably an American who wasn't expecting to have the DD/MM format sprung on them!
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.
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SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!