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Mathematicians Use Mossberg 500 Pump-Action Shotgun To Calculate Pi
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "Imagine the following scenario. The end of civilization has occurred, zombies have taken over the Earth and all access to modern technology has ended. The few survivors suddenly need to know the value of pi and, being a mathematician, they turn to you. What do you do? According to a couple of Canadian mathematicians, the answer is to repeatedly fire a Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun at a square aluminum target about 20 meters away. Then imagine that the square is inscribed with an arc drawn between opposite corners that maps out a quarter circle. If the sides of the square are equal to 1, then the area of the quarter circle is pi/4. Next, count the number of pellet holes that fall inside the area of the quarter circle as well as the total number of holes. The ratio between these is an estimate of the ratio between the area of the quarter circle and the area of a square, or in other words pi/4. So multiplying this number by 4 will give you an estimate of pi. That's a process known as a Monte Carlo approximation and it is complicated by factors such as the distribution of the pellets not being random. But the mathematicians show how to handle these too. The result? According to this method, pi is 3.13, which is just 0.33 per cent off the true value. Handy if you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world."
In a post apocalypse zombie filled world I'd just say "3" and keep the shotgun shells.
Indeed, if a Ma Deuce doesn't solve the problem either the problem is unsolvable or you just need more ammo.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
a gun to calculate Pi value...
According to a couple of Canadian mathematicians,
I didn't realize we had annexed Canada recently. I hope we didn't also get Quebec.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Don't be silly, the method should work in any country.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Euclid's Shotgun? Is that much like Occam's Razor, or Shrodinger's Cat?
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
Do you put the zombies in front of the square alluminum plate?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Just keep firing, soldier! Accuracy will improve.
And that is of course the reason these guys used this particular method to estimate pi: not "science", but as an excuse to blast away with a shotgun. As if you need an excuse for that...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
They would only need confidence in the random distribution of holes in the target.
Goddamn mathematician wasting precious ammunition to have a statistics wank-fest after MY goddamn zombie apocalypse?
I'd put a random distribution of holes in his worthless head!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Come to Tennessee or Indiana and drive out in the country. Pretty much half the stop signs have already been prepped for you - you just have to count holes.
Do you have ESP?
Like the Europas and the Africas? Or like the Asias?
- No those are singular
America is a continent,
- No as was already pointed out, North America is a continent, South America is a differnet continent and Central America is a region where
the two connect.
and your country is called United States of America, like Estados Unidos de Mexico and Estados Unidos do Brazil.
And thank you for the best example - those are the country names - and when talked about in genral non-formal terms drop the "United States of"
or the "Estados Unidos de" and you get America, Mexico and Brazil the names of *Coutries* that everyone except dicks in comment threads fully understand.
Probably without. First, choking deprives your brain of oxygen, making such intellectual efforts as calculating the value of pi much more difficult. Second, any attempt at choking a shotgun-armed mathematician is not just unlikely to be successful but an outright bad idea in general.
Ezekiel 23:20