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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."
With the Conservatives acting like dictators and making bullshit pro-corporations, anti-people laws, I hope Québec splits soon enough.
Then it will pave the way for the USA to let Texas and California go their own separate way, too.
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Nope. You're just presenting a more subtle version of numerological bullshit.
Having only one significant digit means that the actually value for 10 is somewhere between 6 and 14 and the value for 30 is somewhere between 26 and 34. Measurements were not that inaccurate (you don't really think they only have a 15 foot rope to measure with and absolutely nothing else, do you?).
10 and 30 have 2 significant digits even if you assume that they rounded to whole numbers and didn't want to use fractions or decimals. Rounding to whole numbers, a circle with a measure of 10 cubits across will measure 31 cubits around.
That passage of the bible is incorrect. Period.