Pi
 

To what decimal place can you recite pi? I can do 3.14159265358979323, that's 17 places, but I've heard of people who can do much more than that.

Well,

When I was younger I decided that I would memorize the atomic weights of all the elements.

I think I got up to oxygen and then I said to myself, why the heck am I doing this when I can just look it up??

Or as my science teacher once said, it's much more valuable to know where to find information than to memorize it.

i can do 3.14159 and thats all i got 2 freinds who are competing, one is at 50 the other is around 85

memorize? i dunno, but i can damn well eat a whole lot more than 17 slices.

lol, i generally refer to pi as 3.14

Although my friends dad used to have it as his mobile phone number (well 8 digits or so) so i remebered that, but consequently have forgotten his number.

what does it matter?

"you know you're an engineering student if you approximate a horse as a sphere, because it makes the math easier."

and Pi is exactly 3 ;)

One of my professors said something similar... he said, "I'm not here to teach you to think mathematics. I'm here to teach you how to think like a Mathematician." And he would never ask for memorization of anything except how to find the specific information we needed to complete problems.

So, if I need an actual number for Pi, I can get the first 10,000 digits here. But, in order to do exact calculations, I'll just use π.

exactly. 3.14159 is meaningless. π, however... ;)

God damn you, cheerios!! I wanted to quote Frink!
Very sorry it had to come to that, but now that I have your attention...

a monkey can memorize, a "smart" person, can generalize and learn application princibles.

Kadath, who's Frink? I, honestly, saw that pinned on a professors door in the engineering dept waiting for HW help, one day.

I happen to know of a multi-million dollar oil drilling project done by a VERY large international oil company that resulted in a hole being drilled 100 yards off course because one of the projects' programmers hard-coded the value of pi to '4'.

I mean.... 4! That's not even good <i>rounding</i>!

I nearly shit my pants when I read this. That is probably one of the funniest things I have ever read.

Farmer smith was not satisfied with the yield of his milk cows, so he decided to called in an animal psychologist, an engineer and a physicist to try and improve matters. All three inspected the farm and the cows and made there recommendations.
The animal psychologist went first, "If you paint the milking shed green the cows will be happier and happy cows will give more milk."
Then came the turn of the engineer. "If you narrow the milking stalls by 10 centimeters you will be able to add an extra stall and thus be able to milk an extra cow in the same time."
Farmer Smith was very happy so far, now it came to the turn of the physicist. He got out a black board and started drawing an elaborate diagram. Then he started to talk: "First, we approximate the Cow as a sphere of radius r."

pi r ²

pi r not ²

pie r round

cornbread are square

You...you don't know...you don't know who professor Frink is? I...diddley...doesn't know Simpsons...doodely doodely...yelled at her for no reason....
All right, back on track. Professor Frink, professor Frink, he'll make you laugh, he'll make you think. Simpsons character based on Jerry Lewis' potrayal of the Nutty Professor(nerd version). In one episode, attempting to get the attention of a panel of scientists, he is forced to shout "Pi is exactly three!" and holds up all of his fingers except his thumb. When everyone looks at him with a horrified gasp, he continues "Very sorry it had to come to that, but now that I have your attention..." and the episode goes on. My apologies for yelling at you. :D

Back in high school I had to take summer school for Algebra. There was a poster that went around the top of the room that had Pi out to 100 digits. I memorized an addional digit each day for the heck of it b/c the classes were so boring. I got to 20 digits that year, but now can only remember 16. I guess 16 isn't bad after 12 yrs, though.

OOOOOOh... I didn't know he had a name! :D

Pie.

I wish I could remember pi

Eureka cried the great inventor

Christmas pudding Christmas pie

Is the problem's very centre

Professor Frink... I remember him.. (hemflaben!)
What other inventions did he create?

Isn't the world record for reciting pi at several thousand digits? Some Berkeley or Ivey League college professor, or something..

3.14159265358979323846

I memorized it a long time ago during a boring math class. I think I got it right. 20 decimals.

drill a horizontal hole from that, profit loss is minimized.

for those of you who read horizontal hole and thought I was a fucking idiot presentng the idea we can drill horizontal holes. well... continue thinking that :)

EDIT: found new record :p

Pi calculated to 1.24 trillion digits by Jerry Becker
http://mathforum.org/epigone/mathed-news/caldglalkrax

The Web Page Dedicated to Pi™

I got up to 3.1415926535, and then didn't really care enough to learn any more. I remember this TV show where this guy had to memorize pi to 100 digits to win like a million dollars or something...the show had all these different challenges. He didn't screw up either. Lucky bastard..

unless your using a computer because well....were lazy and who would *ever* need more percision then 3.14159 ;)

back in 7/8th grade I memorised it to the 100th place (could reel it off perfectly). I can only go to about 50 now after13+ years, but I could get it all back if I am ever so inclined.

Pi is boring .... now the natural base of "e" .. THAT's something ;-)

1 + 1/1*1 + 1/1*1*2 + 1/1*1*2*3 ..... 1/1*1*2*3*inf

I've memorized pi to 330 digits. Used to take the bus to school 'n back, had nothing better to do, got bored of carrying books to read on the bus, so.... Anyway, wasn't all that hard. Just memorized it in groups of 3.

Now when I recite pi in my head, just to see if I do remember it, it almost seems like there's a pattern to it. Of course, there's not, but, whatever.

Anyway, found that while memorizing it if I thought of how I would type it on a numeric keypad I could memorize it more easily.

Anyway, there's the geek in me coming out again...

Dammit. I was hoping I had someone beat. I got up to 304 (it was around the top border of my math class and I was really bored).

At this point...I think I can still get to a hundred. Like you, I'd memorize in groupings. Usually of 3-5 numbers at a time. I'd recite what I knew, then tack on a few. I found that I got the first part down really really well after a while. I also developed a rhythm so I can say it with a good bit of speed. Actually, for some reason, I have to keep the speed while saying it so it keeps me from typing it effectively.

Had a high school math teacher that was REALLY into pi, so much so that whenever he gave out a detention, the poor moron that got the detention had to spend his time figuring out pi to the next 10 digits or so and paint them on the wall. This guy's room had pi stretching across all four walls several times by the time I graduated.

3.14159 is all you ever need because that will give you some good persision, but easy to remember and fast to type.

Reikes

Sine Sine Cosine Sine
3 point 14159

3rd Rock from the Sun has permenantly implanted that godawful math cheer into my head, I will never forget those digits. I can add about 3 more on a regular basis but that's about it. Nowhere near the attention span to memorize it, 3.141oh look a bird!

As for Pi itself, i usually leave things expressed in terms of Pi. I like just using 3.14 if i really need to. Seeing how much you can get away with approximating is half the fun. reminds me of the days i would only use whole numbers for atomic weights--ah those were the days.

Like amanita, i usually preffer e to pi anyways. e is just cooler because even though pi is what makes the world go round, e^x is still its own derivative.

but if you want to wrap it all up in one ultimate poetry of mathematics, just say that e^(i*pi) = -1. Now isn't that just come craziness?

wlcm, 1 + e^(i*pi) = 0
You gotta squeeze that one last constant in there :)

This is true for large values of 3.

even in lower maths i have been taugh to just use (char pi) it's easier to remember, and you can just leave things as such as "2(char pi)" heh

woah... some of you would actually look at the numbers in the matrix and really see the pictures...

I'm lucky to know where to find it... glad that engineers, doctors, and lawyers don't rely on their memories, the look them up to double check.

3.1415926 . . . that's all i got

I had 3.14159 memorized, but now this thread has increased it to three more digits. :p

Sorry, but how does one actually *calculate* Pi, ive always wondered..?