Slashdot Mirror
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.
So I won't get a Pi day, you insensitive clod!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
And of course, the best way to celebrate is to eat PIE!
...a Japanese mental health counselor who last fall recited 100,000 digits, but did not choose to submit proof to the record book.
:)
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.
That's just plain crazy!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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
Pining for the fjords
Can you image if he gets a mail from Guinness saying "Sorry , you missed the record by 10. Or at least we think you did but tape 26 got chewed by the machine at digit 54166. Bad luck son, try again next year and next time use Memorex!"
Following the discussion about the date/time format, in continental Europe we proud ourselves in experiencing 13-3-7, or 1337...
Quoth Monty Python, "You know, there are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives. It is up to people like you and me who are out of our tiny little minds to try and help these people overcome their sanity. You can start in small ways with ping-pong ball eyes and a funny voice and then you can paint half of your body red and the other half green and then you can jump up and down in a bowl of treacle going "squawk, squawk, squawk..." And then you can go "Neurhhh! Neurhhh!" and then you can roll around on the floor going "pting pting pting"..."
Well, it's one kind of counselling...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
which some will observe at 1:59pm
;)
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
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
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/ or http://www.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!
I feel it's only appropriate to add that march 14th is also international steak and blowjob day
I ask because when I was a child, I remember reading about the "reciting digits of pi" record in the family Guinness Book of Records. It had a photo of the then record-holder, standing in front of a chalk board, upon which was written "3.142857142857142857142857..."
It's not hard to recite the decimal expansion of 22/7.
jmp
... in the comments? I mean, seriously, who cares about Pi when you can get a steak AND a blow job (and if you're good, at the same time?)
On a serious note, check out the website of your local Engineering school... a bunch (here in Canada anyway) have a Pi Throw on March 14th for charity. You pay $10, somebody gets a cream pie in the face (or, often, they can pay $20 to redirect said pie back to you). The proceeds usually support something worthwhile.
Yes, but that woulkd mean violating the standard. I'm an anal retentive, you insensitive jerk!
Now I make a reply involving my clever trick for rusty memories. Mnemonics usually challenge one; my own Slashdot post offers an easier path. You can memorize, and my account retrieves karma!
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
So you do get 3.14. Or, more preciselly, [2007.]3.14, but you can skip the first part.
Tuntematon Muukalainen
does steak and a blowjob day get buried when talking about March 14th. Of course, that's probably because most people here won't be celebrating.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Precisely?
I recall a certain rivalry over memorizing digits of pi back in high school. Everyone was around the 2-3 hundred mark when one guy threw down the gauntlet - 500 digits. Well, I put the memorization effort into overdrive and reached about 2,500 before being "crowned" the undisputed school champ. (Yay!)
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!
Why oh why does everyone ignore the fact that 3.14 is Einstein's birthday too? :'(
So lets sum from n=1 to infinity 1/b^n. Basic Calculus returns a value of 1/(b-1)
This is the probability that the partial digits of pi will be a pallindrome, for base 10, the probability is 1/9. Though it is almost certainly true for binary.
For the existence of a odd length Pallindrome, I exclude the trivial singleton of length one. So as from two to infinity. This comes out to 1/(b-1).