ID:187790
 Oct 1 2004, 5:46 pm
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Oct 1 2004, 5:48 pm
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Dession
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Mmm...Fresh pi
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I thought Pi went on forever, thats what my damn math teacher always told us. Althought 2 million could seem to go on forever eh?
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3.14....nuff said thar :D
~Kujila | |
Meh. What is the point in these people trying to find pi? *cough*... Math is just an invention of our minds, anyways, so why can't we just say, "3.14" and leave it at that? I mean, what use is the full number, pi?
It's not like math is used every time atoms are set up to look like a circle, we just see a circle (Ok ok, maybe if ever atom was set up in a giant computer of infinitely better knowledge than we have on earth that is controling us *matrix ooooo*...). A circle's line goes EXACTLY into itself, so why are we trying to find the end of a line that is FOR SURE infinitely curved? It is NOT a line. It is a circle :P Damn geometry... | |
I think they've taken it out a few billion digits. Plus, I heard that there are mathematical equations that could take up to 15 billion years to calculate... such as "the traveling salesman problem" Basically, here's the problem:
If a salesman is driving from each state's capital in the continental united states, and wants to find out the shortest route in a straight line, how many possible combinations is this? well, that's 48!. Note: that exclamation point means factorial, that's 48*47*46*45*44*43, etc... or: 1.2413915592536072670862289047373e+61, or: one big freaking number. That's how many possible combinations there are in this problem. Now, for a computer to store the ammount of minutes the trip would take, would be an incredible ammount of memory. It would require 9.9311324740288581366898312378987e+61 bytes of memory. More than any computer could possibly ever hold... or 17 steps above a gigabyte. (A step is a priorbyte*1024) Now, let's see how long this takes to calculate, let's say it takes a computer .01 seconds to calculate each combination... factoring in leap years, that's 3.9337324741222629955580554438149e+51 years. Longer than humans, that's 3.9337324741222629955580554438149e+39 trillion years. Longer than the universe will even exist. Point is, it's impossible to calculate. | |
It is all for show. They want to do it, so they do it. Nothing more than that.
Like entertainment, you watch a horror movie because you feel like it, not because it accomplishes anything. This is just entertainment for nerds. | |
Loduwijk wrote:
It is all for show. They want to do it, so they do it. Nothing more than that. There's a good reason for it. Somewhere in pi is a sequence of digits that when ran on a computer, will produce the Greatest Program Evar! :P | |
Jon88 wrote:
Loduwijk wrote: -Wrong. Looking at the full set of digits with your head at at the side of your moniter lets you see the only non-fake nude picture of Anna Kournikova in the world. (no joke) | |
Meh. What is the point in these people trying to find pi? *cough*... Math is just an invention of our minds, anyways, so why can't we just say, "3.14" and leave it at that? I mean, what use is the full number, pi? Depends on the precision you need for the job at hand. An inch of error isn't bad when landing a plane but I certainly wouldn't want a dentist to be off by that much :). | |