(OK, of course HTML doesn’t work in the heading.)
I don’t care how many decimal places you know it to. I just want to know why it was named after the 16th letter of the Greek Alphabet?
Ray (Why not American
http://cs.nyu.edu~yap/gifs/hlx/pi.gif
)
Ray (Why not American
)
Because Don Mclean had it copyrighted?
A hat with bells on is not funny, it is the jester underneath.
Im getting a bit Pied. What Pi are you talking about?:
4pi noun pl pis "piz\ [MGk, fr. Gk pei, of Sem origin; akin to Heb pe pe] (1823)
1 : the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet — see alphabet table
2 a : the symbol p denoting the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter
b : the ratio itself : a transcendental number having a value to eight decimal places of 3.14159265
1pi also pie "pi\ noun pl pies [origin unknown] (ca. 1659)
1 : type that is spilled or mixed
2 : a pi character or matrix
2pi also pie verb pied pi•ing or pie•ing (1870)
verb transitive
: to spill or throw (type or type matter) into disorder
verb intransitive
: to become pied
3pi adjective (ca. 1940)
1 : not intended to appear in final printing <pi lines>
2 : capable of being inserted only by hand <pi characters>
From Asimov on Numbers:
Then I guess it OUGHT [to be] RED:
. . . . . . . . . . <font color="#ff0000" face=“symbol”>p</font>
Ray
red pie is usually cherry, sometimes strawberry, ocaisionally tomato, which is a really nasty pie. I do not eat tomato pie. I can eat an entire cherry pie, but only about 3.14159 slices of strawberry.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
According to Collins Dictionary:
omniscientnot, in a previous incarnation.
The hyphen says it all…
My 9th grade algebra teacher taught us a mnemonic phrase to remember pi to 12 places:
The comma holds the place of the decimal point.
Did anybody else learn this one in school?
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
“How I need a drink! Alcoholic, of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics.”
or, for the teetotalers:
“May I have a large container of coffee?”
You have to remember the position of the comma by yourself.
I mean the position of the decimal point, of course. (In German, we use a decimal comma.)
Crazy Germans, you think a 7 is a backwards F, and add that lil cross bar to a Z. The trouble with mnemonics is that I need a mnemonic to remember them. My friend Roy, a fine boy who desreves fame, says he can remember lots of them,especially on many very early mornings, but can’t remember what they stand for. I think my problem is that I once suffered a decimating coma.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
mr john:
In contrast to the decimal comma, those appear only in some (maybe most) people’s handwriting, never in printed matter. The second crossbar on the 7 helps differentiate it from a 1, which most of us write with the same short bar at the top that you see in some typefaces, so as to tell it from a capital I. Crazy? Only if you learned it a different way.
As for the decimal comma, it gets even better: We use a period (as opposed to the anglo-saxon comma) to separate thousands, millions etc. in large numbers. So it’s just the opposite way. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows? Who cares?
We also have different quotation marks etc. that have absolutely nothing to do with pi.
Yeah, I had to look up pi to find out whether it’s ‘the heavy chapters’ or ‘those heavy chapters’. I guess the real value of these mnemonics is that, over time, I remember where to look up pi.
The real reason is some jokester Mathematician decided that it would indeed be funny for all of time for Math students to have to learn and quote Pi R Square, which of course sounds like Pie are square, so that some other non math person could then say “No, pie are round.” Then an english person can correct the math person and say either, “No, The pie is square or The pies are square, not pie are square. Didn’t they teach you subject/verb agreement in school?”
Those crazy greek math people. Always something with them.
Dern fools. Pi are round, cornbread’s square.
Considering how frayed this thread has gotten, perhaps it would be in order to mention all that stupid freshman humor like
1/cabin d cabin = log cabin
and
<font face=“symbol”>mthaa</font>
(_)
…----
%%| |^^| |’
Ray
Make the last:
(_)
… ----
%| |^^| |’
This:
<font face=“symbol”>m t h a a</font>
(_)
… ‘----
%| |^^| |’
Ray
(_)
… ’ ----
#| |^^| |’
And I guess the first one should’ve really been written:
(1/cabin)d cabin = log cabin