Pi Day

The constant “pi” (π) is probably a fascination for anyone interested in things-maths. We have computer apps to draw perfect circles, but back when engineers had to draw things “by hand,” a compass was necessary. From his days at the drafting board, here is one of my dad’s compasses with a quick sketch I made for this post, along with a wonderful little book about humanity’s intellectual struggles to understand things circular, trigonometric and that irrational and “transcendental” quantity known as “pi.”

The first million digits (after the decimal point): http://www.piday.org/million/
Sorry, I won’t wait while this loads for you; a million characters is a lot of characters. Of course I waited for the complete download and it presented about 50 digits per line. That implies 20,000 lines of digits. My display showed 19 lines at a time, so how many hits of [PageDown] from top to bottom? 20,000 ÷ 19 = 1,053 (to the nearest whole number). That’s a lot of [PageDown] scrolling!

In theory, any string of numbers you can imagine will be contained in the never-ending representation of pi. My 6-digit anniversary (mmddyy) is in the first million digits, as are my wife and daughters’ birthdays, but not mine. Maybe it’s in the second million digits…

One year ago (“Pi in the Rocks?”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2012-03-14
Two years ago (“Am I a bit ‘left-of-center’?”): http://365project.org/rhoing/365/2011-03-14

[Ruth Moucharafieh]

AHA!!! and that's about where Math and I part company!!!! Lovely in b and w!

[Thom Mitchell]

@ruthmouch Thank you, Ruth, for reminding me about "B&W": it's not, but it may as well have been converted to grayscale. What's posted is *not* grayscaled! The compass is unpainted metal and the book cover is white text on black!

[Netkonnexion]

Lovely idea. Nice capture and set up.

[Thom Mitchell]

@netkonnexion Thanks! It was kind of a hurry-up process as it was getting late (and I see that I haven't set my camera clock ahead for daylight savings time!).

[Rick Schies]

I used these instruments, but never fully understood all the math that went along with the tools.

[MaryBeth Dailey]

So this is a "color"photo of black and white things? :0) This is great "still life" type shot. I was thinking "Did he draw that circle so perfectly?" I could never do it, even with a compass. And that is cool about finding your b-day or anniversary etc in the list of decimal place digits in pi. I am with Ruth though...any Math over about middle school blows my mind.

[Thom Mitchell]

@digitalrn And for me, all this math and geometry makes sense. What didn't make sense to me was chemistry and biology. To each our own, I guess!

@espyetta Of course I drew that circle! Definitely "old school" for the purpose of the photo, but why not? Having my dad's compass — with his initials etched on it — made it a no-brainer. :)