Saturday, October 25, 2008

Commenters

Hey. Some commenters have been keeping me honest with the accuracy of my post. Correcting my bad grammar, when I'm not clear on my meaning, or just plain using the wrong word to describe something.

Thanks.

Keep up the good work, keeping me honest, and all. I'm far from perfect, but certainly want to strive to be as close to that as possible.

Here, let me test you.

THE VALUE OF Pi IS EXACTLY 3!!!
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5 comments:

aepilot_jim said...

It has been shown that 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2. Therfore using sufficiently small values of pi or gross rounding methods, pi does, in fact, equal 3.

October 26, 2008 at 12:51 AM
Brad K. said...

Archimedes determined the value of pi lies between 22/7 and 221/71.

But I just round to 3.1415926 for everyday purposes.

When I want better accuracy, such as computing the largest circle contained in the universe to the precision of the width of a hydrogen atom (about 39 significant digits of pi), I use the trigonometry definition - π = 4.0 times arctan(1.0). It does take a 'better' calculator to work in 39 digit precision. My PC is only good to about 9 digits. But it worked OK to build a dog house.

According to Snopes.com, the article that claims Alabama passed a law defining pi as 3 was an April Fools parody written in April, 1998.

"This wonderful bit of creative writing began circulating on the Internet in April 1998. Written by Mark Boslough as an April Fool's parody on legislative and school board attacks on evolution in New Mexico, the author took real statements from New Mexican legislators and school board members supporting creationism and recast them into a fictional account detailing how Alabama legislators had passed a law calling for the value of pi to be set to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.

This brilliant piece of humor was originally posted to the newsgroup talk.origins on 1 April 1998 as well as sent to a list of New Mexican scientists and citizens interested in evolution and printed in the April issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter "NMSR Reports". Its talk.origins poster followed up a day later with a full confession and explanation of the prank, thereby allowing others to share in the fun. One would have thought that would have been the end of it.

Ah but the Internet works in mysterious ways. Several readers forwarded the piece to friends and posted it to other newsgroups. As the story moved along, what would have easily identified it as a parody and not a news item was stripped out: the attribution to "April Holiday" of the "Associmated Press." Now it looked like a real news piece. Which is how it was received by many."

October 26, 2008 at 5:45 AM
Anonymous said...

my favorite pi is peach.

October 26, 2008 at 7:26 AM
Roberta X said...

Yes. Yes, it is.

October 26, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Unknown said...

actually, it's APPL

October 27, 2008 at 4:14 PM

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