For Sufficiently Large Values Of 3

[filkertom]

Happy Pi Day! Here's a guide to celebrating.

And, we can celebrate here -- if you'd like, post either your favorite math puzzle or your favorite pie recipe.

Comments

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I celebrate the later of the two Pi Approximation Days, which has the decency to fall on my birthday in non-leap years. However, I do keep the orthodox holiday, and will whip out the DVD of 'Pi' for tonight's viewing pleasure. :)

If you scroll down this pi page, under "Loop Sequences within Pi" is my opwn small contribution to the lore of pi. :)

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

You have waaay too much time on your hands :)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Yes, and your point being... ? :)

Yeesh. As if I wasn't sufficiently math-geeky already, you can imagine what Contact (the book, not the movie) did to me...

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

I can relate, being a math geek myself :)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I'll be honest--finding that loop sequence was a matter of almost total blind luck. My main mathematical monomania is the relationship between integer solutions to the Pythagorean formula (A²+B²=C²)... I just like to poke my head into π every now and then and pursued index chains on a whim when I stumbled onto the above-referenced site.

I never expected to come across one so soon as index 40. I haven't even the hint of a theory as to whether all index points necessarily fall into a loop, or terminate at a self-indexing number, or whether some point to a non-terminating chain of ever larger index numbers.

But it's neat to think that I might have found something no one else ever knew about: not Euclid, not Descartes, not Bernoulli, not Newton or Leibniz, not Gauss, not Hilbert, not Wiles. That's heavy. :)

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

It is very cool. I don't even know where to start on the theory of that one; maybe there's something in series theory that will point back to a sequence.

I'm kinda out of the game, myself, having received my sheepskin over 15 years ago. Integer tricks are cool, pi is cool, but I was always a calculus and numerical methods gweeb, with a bit of algebra on the side. Think "engineer." :)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I tried to think engineer. I sprained a neuron. :)

Math and I have an odd history. I kinda wish I'd had the discipline to study it seriously; instead, I just move around the fringes, shoving numbers around, playing with Pythagoras and Fermat. I finally let Fermat go; I've joined the camp that thinks he was blowing smoke, that he'd proved his Theorem for the first couple cases and mis-generalized. I'll do things like accidentally re-discover the Newtonian method for extracting roots while trying to re-learn differential calculus--you know you're bored when you'll sit around manually extracting the fourth root of seven, just because you can. ;)

[khadagan.livejournal.com]

So when does Indiana celebrate?
Hugs -- K

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

Are they celebrating 3.2 Day? :)

[shadowsalterego.livejournal.com]

Perhaps on the third of the month.

With these whackos, you never know.

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

Begin with a circle with radius = 1 unit. Transcribe an equilateral triangle around it. Transcribe a circle around that triangle, then a square around that, then a regular pentagon followed by another circle, a regular hexagon, and so on and so forth. As the number of sides of the regular polygon approaches infinity, the polygon more and more closely approximates a circle of some finite radius R.

Find the value of R.

[jss]

Do you use this same puzzle on September 19th?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Y'mean, Talk Like A Pi Rate Day?

[jss]

Affirrrrrrrrrrrrmative, matey.

3/14

[random314.livejournal.com]

Yay! It's MY day!

[wouldyoueva.livejournal.com]

Can I just sing FIBBER ISLAND by TMBG?
(And all they talk about is pie...)

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

I don't know where she got this, but:

(to the tune of "Oh, Tanenbaum")
Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
Your digits are unending,
Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
No pattern are you sending.
You're three point one four one five nine,
And even more if we had time,
Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
For circle lengths unbending.

Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
You are a number very sweet,
Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
Your uses are so very neat.
There's 2 Pi r and Pi r squared,
A half a circle and you're there,
Oh, number Pi
Oh, number Pi
We know that Pi's a tasty treat.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Oh, and this, the grand prize winner of a limerick contest in the GAMES section of OMNI magazine nearly 30 years ago:

If inside a circle, a line
hits the center and runs spine to spine,
and the line's length is D,
the circumference will be
D times 3.14159

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

NICE! :)

-=ShoEboX=-

[jss]

Now I've got

Ay, ay, ay ay,
I forgot the lyrics

running through my mind.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Happy Pi Day, indeed!

via khaosworks, the Pi-Search Page. My birthday, 02251961, for example was found at position 26,842,137 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. Damn, that's a long way in :-)

[annechen-melo.livejournal.com]

Hey, no matter the holiday, I drabble.

But I clean up after myself.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I'll never read HP fanfic again....

[annechen-melo.livejournal.com]

Ah, come on! Jump in, the gutter's fine!

[shadowsalterego.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to pie recipies? :P Mmmm, pie....

[patoadam]

Here are two sex-related math puzzles.

1. How can 2N-1 men have safe sex with 1 woman using only N condoms?

2. What is the probability that an individual will, sooner or later, have sex with a virgin? Make the simplifying assumptions that people choose sex partners at random, and that the number of potential sex partners approaches infinity. Hint: e = the limit as n approaches infinity of (1 + 1/x)**x.