This year 2015, Pi Day has special significance on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. And it flew right past the geeks over at the Google page. They were probably planning a doodle to honor some 183 year old liberal arts major next week.
Considering that the Ancient greeks knew what Pi was (they may or not have learned it from the ancient Egyptians, depending on whose history you read) and the decimal system wasn't invented until a few hundred years ago there had to be a way to express it without decimals for two millennia.
Volfram is right in that 22/7 is 3.1428 while Pi is 3.1415 but 22/7 is close enough for government work at .0013 too high.
I can't take any credit for the observation, it's just that's the definition of an irrational number: a value which can not be represented as a fraction of two integers. The 3 most important irrational numbers are Pi, e, and the square root of 2.
Engineers constantly require answers from numbers which are irrational or imaginary.
3.14.15.....a very unusual Pi day, indeed, as close as Pi geeks will ever get for 100 years. Rejoice while you can math geeks, you probably won't be around for the next one!
Oh. Duh.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Pi can NOT be represented as a fraction of two whole numbers.
Coincidentally, it's Einstein's birthday, too.
ReplyDeleteThis year 2015, Pi Day has special significance on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. And it flew right past the geeks over at the Google page. They were probably planning a doodle to honor some 183 year old liberal arts major next week.
ReplyDeleteRT
22/7
ReplyDeleteConsidering that the Ancient greeks knew what Pi was (they may or not have learned it from the ancient Egyptians, depending on whose history you read) and the decimal system wasn't invented until a few hundred years ago there had to be a way to express it without decimals for two millennia.
Volfram is right in that 22/7 is 3.1428 while Pi is 3.1415 but 22/7 is close enough for government work at .0013 too high.
Al_in_Ottawa
A Chinese mathematician, Zhu Chongzi, got the closest approximation using the integer fraction - 355/113 - which is accurate to six decimal places.
ReplyDeleteAl_in_Ottawa
ReplyDeleteI can't take any credit for the observation, it's just that's the definition of an irrational number: a value which can not be represented as a fraction of two integers. The 3 most important irrational numbers are Pi, e, and the square root of 2.
Engineers constantly require answers from numbers which are irrational or imaginary.
Pi/1, however... how did I not realize that?
3.14.15.....a very unusual Pi day, indeed, as close as Pi geeks will ever get for 100 years. Rejoice while you can math geeks, you probably won't be around for the next one!
ReplyDelete