[HN Gopher] Pi Day
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       Pi Day
        
       Author : throw0101b
       Score  : 130 points
       Date   : 2024-03-14 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | surprisetalk wrote:
       | Woohoo! We're halfway to Tau Day
       | 
       | [1] https://tauday.com
        
         | lifthrasiir wrote:
         | Halfway to the Tau Day (179th or 180th day of year) is March
         | 29th or 30th depending on your definition of "halfway". Pi day
         | is only 73rd or 74th day of year.
        
           | OJFord wrote:
           | tau day being the 180th day of the year is either perfect or
           | incredibly confusing!
        
           | tempodox wrote:
           | t = 2p, so you're off by a factor of 2.
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | and only 6 more days until #HoosierPiDay, 3/20 ;-)
        
           | ninju wrote:
           | For those that need more context
           | 
           | "On Feb. 6, 1897, Indiana's state representatives voted to
           | declare _3.2_ the legal value of pi "
           | 
           | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/02/05/indianas-.
           | ..
        
         | karmakaze wrote:
         | Yes I feel so embarrassed if we're beeping out Pi and the
         | message is received and decoded with the aliens thinking
         | "They're still sending _< what they call Tau>_ / 2". Imagine if
         | we received a transmission of e/2. And what is our fascination
         | with base-10 representation of Tau/2 digits anyway?
        
       | ipsum2 wrote:
       | Google has a cute pi day Easter egg on the search calculator.
        
       | Dalewyn wrote:
       | I see your Pi Day and raise you White Day[1].
       | 
       | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Day
        
       | borlox wrote:
       | a) 3/14 = 0.21428571428 b) If I take reasonable date formats,
       | it's date 2024-03-14 = 2007 today
       | 
       | But kudos for only taking the first three digits, 3.14, as
       | approximation for pi, which is in nearly all cases enough. Some
       | friends in automotive engineering even tried using pi = 3 and
       | 2*pi = 7 for a while, and the results were good enough.
        
         | lifthrasiir wrote:
         | You also have 22nd July the pi approximation day, which is also
         | mentioned in Wikipedia and much more accurate.
        
           | saalweachter wrote:
           | And November 10th (November 9th, this year), as the 314th day
           | of the year.
           | 
           | You can find quite a few excuses to eat pie.
        
             | CharleFKane wrote:
             | I generally do not need an excuse to eat pie.
             | 
             | Your mileage may vary.
        
           | mavhc wrote:
           | Much more? Or slightly more.
           | 
           | If the number of digits in x/y and number in a decimal
           | version are the same, the accuracy is approximately equal
        
         | eigenket wrote:
         | 2*pi = 7 is impressive, given that 6 would be closer. Thats
         | dedication to having bad approximations haha.
        
         | mzd348 wrote:
         | > Some friends in automotive engineering even tried using pi =
         | 3
         | 
         | Did they end up with engine cylinders that were hexagonal in
         | cross-section?
        
       | hyperdimension wrote:
       | As one of my math teachers would remind me, don't forget about 22
       | June, Pi Approximation Day!
        
         | throwaway_5753 wrote:
         | July 22 I think
        
           | saalweachter wrote:
           | You 1-based indexing people.
        
             | madcaptenor wrote:
             | 0-based indexing would celebrate in August.
        
               | saalweachter wrote:
               | Who said anything about 0-based indexing?
        
               | vel0city wrote:
               | I start counting everything at two, 'cause I'm always
               | number one!
        
           | hyperdimension wrote:
           | Aw, bummer. You're right of course.
        
       | voidUpdate wrote:
       | Ever year, Matt Parker calculates pi, and this year it was the
       | largest manual effort to calculate pi in a very long time[1] . I
       | took part this year, though I didn't end up in the video sadly.
       | It was lots of fun though, and a nice trip to london
       | 
       | [1] https://youtu.be/LIg-6glbLkU
        
         | fdgjgbdfhgb wrote:
         | I was there too! It was such a nice vibe :^D
        
         | rrrpdx503 wrote:
         | I put together an iPhone app that guides you through all the
         | steps needed to compute Pi to 100 decimal places. Surprisingly
         | enough, this doesn't require any complex math -- just basic
         | addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division. The
         | hardest part is verifying your intermediate results, and the
         | app will do that for you. In testing it, I've been able to
         | compute about 40 digits by hand. The way I look at it, some
         | people climb mountains, and others run marathons... I figured
         | it'd be an interesting challenge to see if I could calculate Pi
         | by hand.
         | 
         | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pi-100-challenge/id6475694538
        
       | d--b wrote:
       | It's in today's NYT connections puzzle:
       | 
       | https://www.nytimes.com/games/connections
        
         | 4ggr0 wrote:
         | I love the NYT Connections game, but some days it makes me feel
         | like an absolute idiot because I can't get a single group
         | correct and am puzzled when the solutions are revealed :D
         | 
         | Together with globle, travle, worldle, framed and gamedle these
         | couple of games are what I play during my morning coffe break,
         | and I'm glad that they exist.
         | 
         | If I feel like more I also try to solve boxofficegame and
         | tradle, but I can't solve them often.
        
           | dkdbejwi383 wrote:
           | A lot of them need knowledge of USA culture and American
           | English phrases. That's usually what I fail on.
        
             | 4ggr0 wrote:
             | Yeah that's true, was an issue on todays Connections as
             | well :/
        
             | NeoTar wrote:
             | Watching a lot of American television, I'm normally OK, but
             | what got me recently in connections is that apparently
             | Jelly Beans are associated with Easter in the USA... that
             | was a completely new revelation to me.
        
           | brk wrote:
           | Add Dadagrams to your list: https://dadagrams.com/
           | 
           | No affiliation, it was posted to HN a while back and that is
           | how I found it. The premise is fun, you're playing against
           | the developers dad.
        
             | 4ggr0 wrote:
             | Thanks for the tip! Just played it and was absolutely
             | destroyed by a random dad. I'm really not good at these
             | word-based games, my strength is Globle and Travle. But
             | Dadagrams is fun, added it to my bookmarks ;)
        
         | timvdalen wrote:
         | Are moo and new supposed to be homophones of m and n?
        
           | shawabawa3 wrote:
           | Apparently... I don't understand why it wouldn't be "mew" and
           | "new"
           | 
           | I have to say the connections this time was particularly
           | poor. Even with the answers I don't get it
           | 
           | What do Day-O and Jackie-O reference? Why are they linked to
           | Daddy-O and Jell-o? Random works that end in -O sometimes in
           | obscure situations?
        
             | fallinghawks wrote:
             | > Random works that end in -O
             | 
             | Not random, but otherwise yes, end in O. But someone above
             | said you have to be an American to get these and I
             | generally agree.
             | 
             | Daddy-o: a 50s hipster term
             | 
             | Day-o: a song by Harry Belafonte
             | 
             | Jackie O: Onassis, wife to President John F Kennedy
             | 
             | Jell-o: a longstanding dessert mix
        
               | dmonitor wrote:
               | Day-o is a pretty deep cut for anyone. I realized they
               | probably wanted Jell-O and other 'things that end in -o',
               | but I couldn't think of the others.
        
               | lapetitejort wrote:
               | Beetlejuice fans will recognize it easily:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQXVHITd1N4
        
         | jameshart wrote:
         | Also a slickly executed theme on today's Puzzmo crossword:
         | https://www.puzzmo.com/today
         | 
         | (Zach Gage's puzzmo is a great collection of daily puzzles if
         | you're a Wordle/Connections player who craves more)
        
       | AnimalMuppet wrote:
       | For purists, there's Pi Second: 3/14 1:59:23.
       | 
       | Not precise enough? You can go to Pi Millisecond, Pi Nanosecond,
       | as far as you want to go. You don't get to enjoy them for long
       | though...
        
         | jtylr wrote:
         | 1:59:27, no? Or even 1:59:26.5 if we want to get more precise!
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Argh. Yes.
        
       | ykonstant wrote:
       | The wikipedia page on approximations of p contains a lot of
       | fascinating results and historical tidbits:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_%CF%80
        
       | hans_castorp wrote:
       | Today is 14.03. where I live....
        
         | jtylr wrote:
         | Unfortunately there isn't a 31st April.
        
         | remram wrote:
         | Who uses a dot to separate day and month?
         | 
         | 14/03/2024 and 2024-03-14 are already 1 format too many...
        
           | jonathankoren wrote:
           | People that use / to separate hours and minutes.
        
             | hans_castorp wrote:
             | I wrote that comment on 14.03.2024 at 14:55:00
        
               | jonathankoren wrote:
               | I think you mean 0/55/2
        
           | Reubensson wrote:
           | A lot of people use. I think it is common at least in Europe
           | but probably varies by country.
        
       | tomgp wrote:
       | As a Brit I celebrate it on the 3rd day of the 14th month
        
         | mavhc wrote:
         | Not the 31st of April?
        
           | tomgp wrote:
           | I mean now you mention it that might make more sense, but
           | we're a simple people bound by our traditions.
        
             | alsetmusic wrote:
             | This genuinely made me happy. May the Fourth be with you!
             | Wait...
        
         | NeoTar wrote:
         | I celebrate Pi-approximation day on the 22nd of July
        
           | colimbarna wrote:
           | 3.14 is about 0.00159 less than pi, whereas 22/7 is about
           | 0.00126 greater than pi, making pi approximation day closer
           | to pi than pi day.
        
             | noman-land wrote:
             | This is the research I come here for.
        
           | zeroonetwothree wrote:
           | Every day is pi-approximation day. It's just a question of
           | how good the approximation.
        
           | lapetitejort wrote:
           | The day 1131/12/30 yields 3.1416 repeating.
        
         | 725686 wrote:
         | That would be February 3rd, no?
        
         | tempodox wrote:
         | An apt comment on the horrid US-ian date format. Although the
         | international notation, YYYY-03-14, which is de rigueur for
         | political correctness, would side with the 14th of March.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | > YYYY-03-14, which is de rigueur for political correctness
           | 
           | I like it just because I can use it in filenames and sort by
           | name and I'm guaranteed to get it in chronological order.
        
       | RetroTechie wrote:
       | It's also the birthday of Albert Einstein (1879).
        
         | rand0mx1 wrote:
         | Also Karl Marx died on 14th of March.
        
       | andygcook wrote:
       | Plugging the Pi Day Challenge, an online puzzle math quest all
       | about pi created by my high school math teacher, Mr. Plummer (aka
       | Plum). He's been updating it with new puzzles for the past 15
       | years with the only goal of getting students excited about math.
       | 
       | It requires a login to save your progress which I know a lot of
       | people dislike here... but it's worth checking out:
       | https://www.pidaychallenge.com/
        
         | taintedq wrote:
         | Is it just me or is puzzle 24 still locked?
        
       | SeanLuke wrote:
       | Perhaps we might proclaim all of March to be Biblical Pi Month in
       | solemn remembrance of the declaration made in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2
       | Chronicles 4:2 that PI = 3.
       | 
       | Also consider a semicircle of diameter D. Here the outside of the
       | semicircle S, is D * PI / 2, so PI = 2 * S / D.
       | 
       | Now instead of a single semicircle, consider two semicircles,
       | each of diameter D/2, stacked on top of each other so their
       | diameters line up to add to D. Each has a outside S/2, so once
       | again PI = 2 * S / D.
       | 
       | Now do it for 4 semicircles each of diameter D/4. Again, PI = 2 *
       | S / D.
       | 
       | Now continue to infinity. Eventually the outsides of the stacked
       | semicircles will, at the limit merge to the diameter. Thus at the
       | limit PI = 2 * S / D = 2 * D/D.
       | 
       | Thus PI = 2. Maybe Pi Month should be February? I will leave that
       | to the religious and mathematically inclined to argue.
        
       | yreg wrote:
       | Each pi day I get excited for a new Vihart video.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9YgCCQYVI
        
       | jonnycat wrote:
       | It's a special kind of person who cares enough about math to
       | celebrate "pi day", but not enough to be disturbed by the
       | approximation of 3.14.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | Even NASA only uses 15 digits because anything beyond that is
         | unnecessary even at Universal scales.
         | 
         | Also if you want to be really picky, you can celebrate at 1:59
         | and 29 seconds.
        
           | pinkorchid wrote:
           | 27 seconds! :)
        
             | madcaptenor wrote:
             | I'd thought 26, but I wasn't rounding properly. I've heard
             | it as "thirty-four seconds before two o'clock", to obscure
             | what time it actually refers to.
        
       | jonathankoren wrote:
       | "Pi Day" is a fake holiday invented by Big Math to sell more
       | math.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | It was invented by Dominoes to sell more pizza.
        
       | eranation wrote:
       | Pi Is (still) Wrong.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ
        
       | skrbjc wrote:
       | Congrats to all of those who received their MIT acceptances
        
       | drewda wrote:
       | Would have been more entertaining if the "Oppenheimer" movie had
       | been made about Frank Oppenheimer [1] -- a younger brother of J.
       | Robert and the founder of the Exploratorium museum in San
       | Francisco [2], where Pi Day comes from [3]
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oppenheimer
       | 
       | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratorium
       | 
       | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
        
       | fnord77 wrote:
       | my mom turns 90 today!
        
       | tempodox wrote:
       | It should rather be on the 116th day of the year, because 365/p
       | [?] 116, so around 28th of March (27th in a leap year).
        
       | jayrot wrote:
       | As a reminder, Pi Day is a doomsday!
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule
        
       | BeFlatXIII wrote:
       | Can't wait for e day on February 71st.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-14 23:01 UTC)