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Pi Day and an Interview With a Pi Researcher
JoshuaInNippon writes "In honor of Pi Day, March 14 (or 3.14 for those who may need a hint), readers may be interested in reading an interview with Professor Daisuke Takahashi, the Japanese researcher who found 2.5 trillion digits of Pi back in August, before being apparently being edged out in December by a French computer programmer looking to prove his efficient coding abilities. Professor Takahashi's interview gives some unique insight into one man who truly marvels at the number that has driven people to ever greater lengths to find more digits for centuries."
Plant Kingdom adds "There have been a number of proposals for alternatives to March 14 (see the Wikipedia page for Pi Day). Here's mine: when the Earth has gone through 1/pi-th of its orbit, as measured from Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice. I've put together a web site to make the case."
Huh? Pi isn't 14.3 or 14/3.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Pi is relevant to the circumference of circles. The earth has an elliptical orbit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumference
Um...pi is relevant to a lot of things, including ellipses. And besides, the orbit of the Earth has very low eccentricity, meaning it is very close to a circle. Who modded the parent "informative"?
OTOH, reading Bellard's FAQ on his latest result does seem like he was interested more in fast algorithms and not in Pi. So I stand corrected. Still.. he's not some random programmer to us. :P Following links from his FAQ, I found two cool books:
Banu
Bad form replying to one's self but this is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Date.png
The number of countries using the US system is pretty small. It's basically the US and a few random places like Palau and Micronesia.
But - there are quite a few variations on date format, more than I thought :)