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It's π Day! It's π Day! Yeaaahhhh!!! 🥳

(I resurrected this older post...)
Happy birthday π !

Today (3/14) is π day.

(1) π is equal to the ratio of the circumference of a circle and its diameter.

(2) π is a transcendental number. Briefly, this means that we do not know its value, and we never will, haha. π, you’ll always be a mystery.

(3) π is (almost certainly) a normal number: the distribution probability of digits within π is random. If we assign a pair of consecutive digits to a character (such as "65"="A", cf. ASCII code table) we will find the contents of each book that has ever been written (even bad books, those behind the front row on our shelves) somewhere along the digits of π, and also any book that has not been written, and all variations thereof. There will be a version of Hamlet where Ophelia is called Helen, and one where Hamlet had killed the King himself.

(4) π is more fundamental than the physical constants. If the universe did not exist, the physical constants would loose their meaning, but π would remain the same, [u]indicating that spirit is more fundamental than matter[/u]. We, as humans, can change a lot of things, but we can’t change π. Even God cannot change π, sorry Sir, You may have created the world but You did not create π. It’s always been there. And, no offense, o Lord, but you don't know the value of π either.

(5) π is considered to be one of the five fundamental numbers: i, e, π, 1, and 0. These numbers appear in the beautiful equation e^(i*π) + 1 = 0 (Gauss? Euler? Don’t remember.)


Happy birthday π!
You’re one of a kind, and we are big fans!

We love you π !
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
Lovely way of putting it, though you lost me for while with 3/14 until I twigged first the American way of writing a date in numbers: month/day/year, not day/month/year as in Britain; then to replace the solidus with a decimal point..

By the British date system, Pi Day would be 22nd of July!

'
Maybe the number we call by that dear little Greek letter is the Lord's little joke!. As a number though it crops up all over the place too, of course, as well as circles, cylinders and spheres; particularly in electrical and acoustics calculations - they are also very friendly with sines, cosines and logarithms.
.

There is a purely co-incidental but rather neat practical trick to calculating an area of a circle to 4 decimal places when you are given the diameter not radius.

Area = πR^2 = (πD^2)/4 = 0.7854D^2.

Now look at a numerical (calculator) keypad...
helenS · 36-40, F
@ArishMell It also appears in places where we would not expect it. For example,
\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} exp(-x^2) dx = \sqrt{π}

Hey admins! We need a math formula generator!
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@helenS Ah well, I am afraid you have studied mathematics to a far higher level than I could ever achieve!

It's not very easy typing algebra in 'Word' though I think that does have a function that creates them as images.

It won't be very legible due to the problems of copying and pasting from 'Word' to a very basic test-editor but here's our transcendental friend again, this time in an equation quoted from work by the 18C mathematician George Green. I found it printed round the rim of a mug probably bought from a museum gift-shop. The emboldened characters are meant to be integral signs. I don't know what the apostrophes are, but neither do I know what this string of calculus does anyway!

[b]ʃ[/b][i]dxdydz[/i]UδV + [b]ʃ[/b][i]dσ[/i]U dV/dw - 4 πU’’ = [b]ʃ[/b][i]dxdydz[/i]VδU + [b]ʃ[/b][i]dσ[/i]V dU/dw - 4 πV’ …..
sarabee1995 · 26-30, F
@ArishMell What an I missing???? What does 22 July have to do with Pi??

22/7?

Oh wait! Never mind!
22÷7=3.14 ... Got it. 😁
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@sarabee1995 @helenS I recall a former work colleague describing one day that when helping his daughter with her Maths homework, he was shocked to find the teacher had told the pupils to take π as 3.

Yet surely they had all been taught vulgar fractions and/or decimals well before advancing to π calculations?

Just Three! Poor little π.
helenS · 36-40, F
@ArishMell A thousand decimal places are as far away from the truth of π as just one digit.