PI

As far as America, Canada, England, Germany, India, China and much much more!

Did you knew there are a better aproximation than 22/7?

Should it be "am a better" or "is a better" or "are better (s)"?

Anyhow try 106/333, 113/355 and 120/377.

The prof had all the first year students calculating PI. (that was before calculators)

Most started with 22/7. and did pages full. most of the second lines were unique.

It should be 333/106, 355/113 and 377/120.

Did you knew there are a better aproximation than 22/7?

"Did you know that there is a better approximation than 22/7?"

ancients Egyptians caculated it as (16/9)^2, pretty close to the circunference ! there are other aproximations, and with super computers you can calculate how much you want I think.

Thank you NILOBA.

I'm proud of to be a son of one of those ancients Egyptians, more than 7000 years ago.

Hey Abdel,

Is your dad really 7000 years old (or both of you) ?

Accurately to over 1 trillion. Personally I just use it to 6 decimal places.

Note- due to the natural non reoccurring pattern of Pi, you cannot represent it as a fraction accurately (you need to use an infinite series, such as the Gregory-Leibniz series).

Designing a computer program (usually in C) and calculating Pi accurately to as many decimal places as possible has been a long standing (if somewhat limited) class room engineering project.

'Tis a favourite ambition of mine

A new value of Pi to assign

I'd fix it at 3

for it's simpler you see

Than 3.14159

Well you wouldn't be a very good professional (anything) if you followed the advise in the Limerik, that's for sure.

but you have completly missed his point ... just because the reality of PI is 3.14156 doesnt mena that a upper management type can't call it three on a capricious judgement and force all others to follow down an erronious path in the name of "progress" .... just because it's only his financial progress is is irrelavant to you , stop thinking for yourself and follow the company line.....you ungrateful worker bee

Your working at the wrong company my friend. Down here our management actually listen to the engineers. Besides, even if they wanted to call it 3, does not mean you should dumb down the actual working figures so they can do the math. Just simplify the final results for them. Its all about presentation.

you'll never get anywhere with that think for yourself attitude..... and no one really listens to engineers, they just pretend to .... much like kids "listen" to their parents

how many times have engineers repeatedly told the powers that be what a bad idea things are or that they need to be fixed (new orleans levy system) only to be ignored /patted on the head ? so just knuckle under to the corporate world and every one will be much happier as the world slides of it's axis into some other dimension....

Bwahahahahahaahaaa. Oh my, where are you getting your information from. As an ACTUAL engineer I can say that it is the responsibility of the Engineer to ensure that the world progresses forward and does not go backwards (and slide off its axis into oblivion). If you cannot beat the system you find ways around it and compromise (a little). You certainly don't give up just because of a few mistakes made by management, now do you.

Just because the media says something does not mean it is true, and just because the media shows a few major disasters caused by bad management or shortsightedness does not mean that ALL management and EVERY company is flawed. Engineering disasters make good television, but they are rare compared to all the other great (and not-so-great) engineering accomplishments made every day.

Be careful to get your facts straight before making broad sweeping generalisations about an industry you don't appear to know anything about.

After 25+ yrs in the machinery rebuilding biz and an additional 15 in the design and construction of process/machine controls, my intention is not to slight the people of this board ,or engineers in general for matter... but to rather cynically make light of the fact that no matter how great our collective education is and no matter how many times we prove, by history and/or expeirience that we are right, that there will always be the meatheads who are "in charge" and unfortunately they reflect on all of us because they never seem to get blamed for the crap that happens..... it is never a management failure but seems to be always an engineering error....

and possibly the fact that sometimes i dip a little too far into the sarcasm bucket ...

sometimes....

Ah, so I probably shouldn't mention the word "Maintenance" around you.

________________________________________________________________

"Maintenance? We don't need no stinken maintenance" - Company Accountant

and to that i only need reply with two words.... military intelligence... or maybe government help... unfortunately the word maintenance , like engineer covers way too broad of a spectrum .... janitor and custodian to phd and under the "so what if thats not what it's designed for " doctrine way too many from the lower strata end up assigned/forced to do things they no business even standing next to let alone trying... but it keeps me in business sooo..... also keeps my wife from complaining about that "feed the children, let them live inside, pay the bills" etc etc

Jack be nimble, Jack (may)be (you're too) quick,

Oh no... oh no... oh no...!!! Jack, you are WAY down under and are fortunate to be living in an environment where your management still value engineers.

Jack, LISTEN to duffdr... in the USA; it is the bean counters and lawyers who are FORCING their way... and this is the problem!!!

There may be a turn around (recently) in Mr Bush who is for the first time acknowledging that there COULD be a (environmental) problem; but listen to duffdr's frustration and try to HEAR him talk about HIS environment!!! No one else listens!

duffdr: Have I heard you correctly?

Neil

(Jack, All Blacks still play good rugby, but we're coming out to get you soon!)

No, no, no. We know that the accountants run the world and that the lawyers are there to make our lives difficult. The trick is to try and work around them by being sneaky. Many times you cannot just come out with it, you have to work in the shadows to help change occur (just don't expect any recognition).

There is however only so much that can be done. If your management are anything like this http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070612.html (or any of the many other fine examples Scott Adams has come up over the years), then there may not be much hope for the company.

What's your problem? I may be able to offer some advice (I do work quite a bit with companies in the US).

oh yes my freind you have.... while all of us have learned, or hopefully soon will, to work around the IMBECILES that pass for our leaders at every level, there exists the "it will be fine , lets worry about that later" approach to so many things. the clowns that make the decisions have little or no knowledge/moral character ( concrete panels hanging from the ceiling in boston tunnels) and even less of a spine to actually say "mmmm might be a bad idea, maybe we should actually use something that WORKS" instead of what the low bid is.... or maybe the lets dam the yankze (i think thats right )river in china to make more power but watch the dam shift and oh we made a lake that is so polluted that nothing lives in it but we will worry about that later.... sorry a little cynical this am....

duffdr,

Have you ever watched the History Channel series of programs, Engineering Disasters? Wonder how much of that was caused by political pressure; low bids, ignorance of evolving physics/techniques, or using 3 instead of 3.14159...?

Yes, sometimes it's good to be cynical.

that program is a very good point.... and how many of those disaster were immediatley preceded /followed by the single expression of the greatest philosopher/commentator of our time, Homer Simpson, followed immediately thereafter by the sound of stampeding management sheep running to their pre -assigned cover you ass spot.... fortunately god sees fit to find ways to protect us for the most part from being the victims of idiots...

Ahhh, come on, duffdr... Don't hold back. Let us know how you really feel.

"Your working at the wrong company my friend. Down here our management actually listen to the engineers."

I must admit that 20 years ago when I used to flit back and forth across the Tasman Sea management in New Zealand were considerably more responsive to the advice of engineers than their Australian counterparts. I even had a couple of occasions where they specifically asked me to fly over just to give them advice implementing my recommendations even before I was on the plane and headed home.

However, there is one glaring example that shows New Zealand is not immune to the ignorant, inappropriately qualified, management syndrome. Back in 1998 the lack of maintenance and refusal to upgrade the power feeds to Auckland managed to black the major part of Central Business District out for five weeks. Things may have improved since then but it certainly shows NZ isn't immune to the inept engineering management that has been slowly engulfing the rest of the engineering world sine the early 1980s.

How many times have others heard management ask for advice from their engineers and then respond to the advice with something like:

"That's not the advice I want to hear."

Or,

"Don't give me problems give me answers."

Or,

"I don't care that it wasn't designed to do that just make it work."

Or,

"I don' care if it can't do it, we sold it that way so make it work that way"

Or, may absolute favorite from a dimwitted manager that had no idea what he was talking about and I really am quoting what he said,

"Instead of drilling a round hole here drill a square hole!"

One of the main problems which was a direct cause of the blackout (which knocked out ALL the underground high voltage cables to our country's largest city for a period of weeks) was the fact that all of old engineers that knew about how the aging electrical infrastructure worked were replaced over the years with young graduates (or no one at all). They really didn't know what was going on and so were powerless to stop it when the conditions were right for a catastrophic cascading overload.

A dark day indeed. I must admit, our company management in New Zealand is fairly good. Most of our problems seem to come from the politicians and environmental groups that wont let us build any new power plants or power lines. They seem to be completely blinded to the fact that our infrastructure is aging and if it isn't replaced it will fail.

<sigh>

So sit back with a sheep and a Foster's and for once, enjoy the night sky while you can.

a drink AND a date ....coooollll and a good time will be had by alll

Except me. I don't like Fosters! How about a Lion Red instead.

_________________________________________________________________

"Its red like a fire engine, and its got a little lion on it aye".

Hey! Whatever floats your boat. I just like Foster's because the can are so big.

Think of the poor waste collection people...

...you could as least have compacted it.

Hell! They can probably have a party on the dregs!!!

I think there something about the nearby water ;

Where the heck did you find this animated gif?!

Yeah , it's really good. I already copied it yesterday () to a secret goody box . Very very nice. Did you do it yourself PW ? What film is the clips lifted from ?

Who wants to be rational, when we can be irrational and eat the PI ?!

All this goes to show that there really is no correlation between the diameter and the circumference of a circle. It's like looking for the correlation of the size of your left big toe to your eye color... They're all parts of you (the same being), so why shouldn't there be a correlation!

We just try to keep getting better approximations because ∏ is sometimes damn handy if you don't look too closely.

There IS an exact correlation. The answer happens to be in the real analog (or continuous) realm, rather than the discrete realm.

The difficulty is that most of us humans try to FORCE the result into a RATIO OF INTEGERS... ie. a RATIONAL number. But PI (and others) are NOT RATIONAL numbers, they fall into a different set of numbers called REAL numbers...

It leads us to the question: "are some infinities bigger than others" because:

"INFINITY OF THE FIRST KIND"

We can write down an infinite set of integers [whole numbers] (-etc...,-2,-1,0,1,2,...+etc) this is an "infinity of the first kind". If you view this on a number line on a piece of paper, you would see DISCRETE markings on the number line at each integer.

"INFINITY OF THE SECOND KIND"

Then if we write down another set of numbers which uses integer numbers divided by all other integer numbers, the set looks like this:

0/1, 1/1, 2/1, 3/1, ...

0/2, 1/2, 2/2, 3/2, ...

0/3, 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, ...

... etc (and also including all negative numbers, and some of course are repeated)

This set of numbers is called the RATIONAL NUMBER SET... and we may argue that this infinite set of numbers is larger than the first infinity, and so we could say that this is an "infinity of the second kind". If you view this on a number line on a piece of paper, you would see further DISCRETE markings on the number line at each rational number, but the number line would be closing in somewhat and getting rather full of discrete markings.

"INFINITY OF THE THIRD KIND"

As we have seen that with numbers such as PI (and exponential "e" etc), we also have a set of numbers that CANNOT be written as a ratio of integers (RATIONAL numbers); this set of numbers is called the REAL set, which includes all INTEGERS, AND all RATIONAL numbers, and in fact there are an infinite set of REAL numbers that we could also argue is larger than the previous two sets, and so we could say that this is an "infinity of the THIRD kind". If you view this on a number line on a piece of paper, you would see a CONTINUOUS LINE on the number line covering the entire REAL NUMBER LINE

"INFINITY OF THE FOURTH KIND"

There are more numbers that are not REAL numbers, such as IMAGINARY NUMBERS, which are derived from [square root of minus one]... which of course we call "i" or "j" in mathematics or engineering. This number has the special quality of enabling us to shift things easily by 90degrees, and many more useful tricks. This leads to another infinite series of numbers, so we could argue that there is yet a larger "infinity of the FOURTH kind". These numbers can be set out on a piece of paper to form the COMPLEX set of numbers, or COMPLEX PLANE.

.......

So... How many infinities are there???

Stephen Hawking et al could enlighten us perhaps?

That's total bull-frop!!! The reason why it doesn't come out to some exact non-transcendental number is because the relationship is transcendental! It makes good fun around the hookah, but when hard reality shines on the day, it's transcendental because there isn't a relationship.

Go! Try it yourself, pick anything and mathematically match it to anything else. My guess is you'll just come up with another transcendental number. Constantly trying, over-and-over, to find the connection... How many frigin' decimal places do you need before you give up?!

But that's just my point of view.

What's your definition of "total bull-frop"?

What is your definition of TRANSCENDENTAL NUMBER?

TRANSCENDENTAL EQUATIONS are used when a direct solution is not available... ie. you may have ONE equation with ONE unknown, and a solution should be possible.

One could set up a TRANSCENDENTAL EQUATION TO CONVERGE on the solution, (using perhaps Newton-Raphson technique) i.e. the solution would become more and more accurate as the solution converged.

Well! pie are not square! pie are round and cornbread are square.

Π r not ², Π r Ò and cb r ♦ QED

Not quite like Stephen, perhaps, but I might add a little cannon fodder to the fray:

After so many decimal places nobody gives a damn (except, perhaps, some lonely engineer out there).

However, to continue with your presentation of the continuous realm, let us not forget: λ, or Π²/6 = 1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + 1/16 + ... 1/∞

And, finally,

Cheers,

-John

REAL cute!

Hi! Well I do not understand what you intend to mean by "correlation".

If you are refering to relation, then well there is a distinct relation between the radius and the circumfrence. The reason it is called a relation is because it is the same for all the circles that you may pick up for testing and evaluation. The value of Pi may not be clear but the relation is.

Vishal...

The problem with Pi is not with the number itself but rather the fact that we are trying to represent it with a decimal number. We should be using base Pi in which case it's simple

Pi = 1_π

Bang on with circles, but if we worked to the base PI, then we would look at our ten fingers irrationally!

i have done that... after some "transcendental" refreshments....

i think it has to do with the computer. how many digits can the most complex computer store in its memory.

http://www.apfloat.org/apfloat_java/applet/pi.html

Basically we have program to calculate PI indefinitely and it doesn't take up much memory or computer power.

Pineapple

Java was never my thing (I used C), but are you aware that you can run into serious accuracy issues due to the fact that you are limited to manipulation of finite numbers (eg- 64 bit long). Did you overcome this issue? as I never did when trying to calculate Pi using the C programming language.

I would be interested if anyone has a link to how they implement calculating Pi on the computer properly (or if it just the brute strength infinite series approach I used) as well as the checking program design to ensure continued accuracy.

Hi Jack,

Other than for the sheer fun of it, what engineering application requires a value of Pi greater than 1,000,000 decimal places?

I was having a think about it, but nothing springs to mind. Its not like atomic clock time or weight standards where accuracy is critical. Perhaps in very large or very small (microscopic) construction projects where accuracy is necessary as small errors become noticeable. Astronomy is another possible one, and about the only one where the scale is large enough to warrant incredible accuracies.

Anyone got any ideas where a super accurate value of pi is necessary.

Jack,

FYI (excerpted from Wiki):

Despite much analytical work, and supercomputer calculations that have determined over 1 trillion digits of π, no simple pattern in the digits has ever been found. Digits of π are available on many web pages, and there is software for calculating π to billions of digits on any personal computer. See history of numerical approximations of π.

-John

That's missing the point. Yah, press the button and get pi to 1 million decimal places. I didn't learn anything doing that.

The end result never interested me, it was the journey and learning experience of doing it myself (along with learning new ideas and ways to implement them) that I was interested in (like how to account for the large errors that will occur from adding fractions whose value can only be expressed as a finite number on the computer, and how to prove to myself that what I get is actually the right answer).

Using a program on the web to calculate Pi to 1 million places is nice but if its not correct due to compounded rounding errors, well who would know?

Did somebody just use the "approximation" word?! Ooooh, I'm telling!

Well my computer is now state of the art (and the information available on the internet is quite impressive now days), perhaps I will re-open my old Pi calculation project. One of the things I wanted to do was find the limits of what the basic software could handle. <Hmmm> I wonder how Excel will fare trying to accurately handle the maths of an infinite series.

Could be good for a laugh.

Sorry if my wisdom is late , or anybody else has beaten me to it .

Pi is finite. It's value is precisely 3

I know this to be true , because the internet does no tell fibs.

See! Mathematics by religious comity, just the way God himself a intended it!

Woooo! Praise a the Lord!!!"

By the way, can we count on any of these people to put on an explosive belt and walk into another's church any time soon?

Well I did watch Mississippi burning last night , but it's quite an old film now. Anyway I like Skynyrds song. As they said , if Neil Young don't like it he can...They may have lucked out near Baton Rouge , but Neil Young is just , well Neil Young. I did like him with the other lot in Deja vu though. The fact that it was Alabama was incidental , though people in the NE of England did want to hang a monkey accused of being a spy.

HI guys.... really...

Pi could be used as 3.... well that is what was quoted as being said....

How close is the value of 3.1@#@$@#$ to 3... I'd say very close... So people rounded it off while reporting in your religious text... Dont be cynicall about your religion be proud they knew the relation existed... But yes... it is stupid to stay by that word and fail to see that there is more to Pi than just 3.000000.

Just because one lives in US and is visiting India and has his time set as per his own local time zone... I'd accept that day in India would reflect to a night in his home town... but what would you say if he went about screaming it is day in the middle of the night... looking at his watch but ignoring to see a much more evident proof before him. That would be stupid....

Anyways... 0 and the decimal system was the gift of Indians/asians to the world... Please correct me but prior ro that I do not see any mention of decimals in the european world... (well egyptians and greeks did use accurate maths... But grrks were/are asians and the egyptians/greek and the Indians have had a long history of trade and information exchange...)

take care guys... your religion is not stupid but yes the people who see only one aspect and shut their eyes and ears to everything else are stupid and a shame to any community... In the modern world they are called "Management Gurus"

Take care.....

Happy Gandhi Jayanthi.....

A Monkey can type part of pi as lengthy as you wish it to. It just won't tell you which part.

To gain some measure of calculation speed , concatenate the binary value of all characters in this thread , convert to decimal and divide by thread life.

First you have to tell us how long a thread lives.

It depends how long admin take to catch you. Ha

S'pose I'll have to join in....as some just don't seem 'get' it.

As some one said..Pi exists in the physical world as a ratio from any circle.

That's all.

The maths, arithmetic, trancendental hoopla or whatever is just our attempt to shoehorn it into a convenient measurement system for our own use.

It doesn't matter a fig what we call it...it aint gonna change a thing!

Maths is the tool ... not the end product.

As some one said..Pi exists in the physical world as a ratio from any circle.

miao miao miao

pi is a concept.

ner ner ner !

It also has a day.

T'isn't

You cat's only have to worry about stuff like the number 9 . If you could advise where/when and how high your finale is , I should be most grateful .

Only used up about 4 so far...mostly falling off Lambrettas in my youth!

And getting a 2kv belt...

I went to see a mate in Hospital years ago - it was wall to wall bikers, in one of those long Victorian wards. Enough plaster to make a fresco. I think these days your either walking away from it or you get severely mangled.

Yes , I like belts. And suspenders , trusses , stays , braces ... Safety first I always say ! Basking Sharks leave me puzzled though .

sorry

sorry...

Hi Kris... Pi is a relation and not a concept...

Not just circles but any 3D objects which have a circular origin...

The relation is that the circumference of any circle is Pi multiples of its radius... call it wishful thinking... but this wish came true for all circles and 3D objects of circular origin...

Have a nice day... with great relations....

Happy Pi Day!

Thanks Mousejockey,

Enjoyed the link.

Cheers,

John

I took this in Florida a couple of years ago. I have not retouched it at all.

Gwannn! Get outa Dodge dude.

(are you serious?) PI in the sky?

Maybe the aliens are trying to tell us something. You know, don't mess with PI...

Thank you Mousejockey

It is a nice link, where you can find (Pi can be found in the design of the pyramids at Giza).

Abdel Halim