{"id":550,"date":"2008-03-14T15:38:04","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T15:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/?p=550"},"modified":"2015-03-15T14:33:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T19:33:40","slug":"celebrating-pi-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/celebrating-pi-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Pi Day (and other magical numbers)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img class=\"colorbox-550\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/180px-Pi-symbol.svg_.png\" alt=\"\" align=\"right\" \/>Today is Pi-Day 2008. A day in honor of Pi, one of the oldest and most mysterious mathematical constants known to man. A day in celebration of the works of dozens of great mathematicians and scholars. A day to revel in the glory and power of Pi. For those of you that live in the USA and use the MM\/DD date representation format, the reason should be clear enough: March 14th, 2008 == 3.14.<\/p>\n<p>Pi isn&#8217;t <em>just<\/em> a number that you can use to calculate circle-related mathematics, it&#8217;s a symbol of something by far greater. Pi is one of many<strong> <\/strong>&#8220;<strong>magic<\/strong>&#8221; numbers that are found everywhere &#8211; if you know where to look. These magic numbers can&#8217;t be explained, they just are. And if you use them right, they make it a lot easier to do a lot of really complicated things&#8230; In a way, they&#8217;re a testimony to technology and computers (or vice-versa, depending on how you look at it).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pi\" rel=\"follow\">Pi<\/a>, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imaginary_unit\" rel=\"follow\">i<\/a><\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/E_%28mathematical_constant%29\" rel=\"follow\"><em>e<\/em><\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Golden_ratio\" rel=\"follow\">Phi<\/a> are just some of the numbers that have an almost-magical role in furthering scientific and mathematical studies and observations in our daily lives. It doesn&#8217;t matter where they came from or what they actually mean; the one thing that truly counts is what you can make them do for you.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>No one <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">knows<\/span> <em>can<\/em> know what Pi stands for &#8211; it&#8217;s a <em>transcedental<\/em> number that never terminates. While it&#8217;s commonly shortened as 3.14 or 3.14159; but in reality, it never ends:<\/p>\n<pre>\r\n3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348<\/pre>\n<pre>253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055\r\n<\/pre>\n<pre>\r\n596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486<\/pre>\n<pre>\r\n104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903<\/pre>\n<pre>\r\n600113305305488204665213841469...<\/pre>\n<p>Nowadays, when you say &#8220;Pi&#8221; you&#8217;re not just referring to the endless number, but also indirectly referencing the cult-like following it has gathered over the years. Pi is everywhere, and not just in mathematics and nature alone. <a href=\"http:\/\/3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com\/index2.html\" rel=\"follow\">Websites<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/product\/6e7e\/\" rel=\"follow\">T-Shirts<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/files.extremeoverclocking.com\/file.php?f=36\" rel=\"follow\">software<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/web.cs.dal.ca\/~jborwein\/pi-culture.pdf\" rel=\"follow\">pop-culture<\/a> (PDF warning!) have all irrationally-converged over the Pi concept (pun intended!).<\/p>\n<p>March 14th isn&#8217;t the only day that Pi is celebrated &#8211; a number of other days including July 22nd (22\/7 \u2248 Pi), November 9th on Leap Years, and November 10th otherwise (the 314th days of their respective years) are also recognized as &#8220;Pi Approximation Days&#8221; in their own right. And in China, December 10th at 1:13 PM is also considered to be yet another Pi Approximation (December 10th is the 355th day of the year, and 355\/113 \u2248 Pi).<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the abundance of &#8220;magic numbers&#8221; tucked-into corners of everyday life, hiding in flower petals, ancient architectures, the layout and design of the universe, and belly-button ratios make one wonder: <strong>What other miracle numbers are out there, waiting to be discovered and their secrets unveiled; bringing order to chaos and providing an explanation for phenomenon where there once was none?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some &#8220;magic numbers&#8221; trivia:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft colorbox-550\" style=\"float: left; padding: 8px;\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/220px-Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"110\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albert_Einstein\" rel=\"follow\">Albert Einstein<\/a> was born on Pi Day, 1879; as-is befitting of a scientist of his rank!<br \/>\n(Sidebar: Mahmoud Al-Qudsi, the founder of NeoSmart Technologies was born on Nov. 9th, or Pi Approximation Day as well).<\/li>\n<li>Many scientists lost their minds trying to figure out Pi! The &#8220;circle-squaring disease&#8221; (from &#8220;squaring the circle&#8221; or the attempt to find a square with the same area as a circle in a finite number of steps) is known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk\/~history\/HistTopics\/Squaring_the_circle.html\" rel=\"follow\">Morbus Cyclometricus<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The length from your toes to your belly-button divided by the length from your head to your belly-button is equal to Phi.<\/li>\n<li>James Smith wrote several <em>books<\/em> &#8220;proving&#8221; that Pi is equal to 25\/8 &#8212; which is wrong, of course.<\/li>\n<li>Most people classify Pi as being just another &#8220;irrational number,&#8221; but that&#8217;s actually not true, because if Pi were simply irrational, dealing with it would be so much easier (and &#8220;squaring the circle&#8221; would be possible). In reality, Pi is a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transcendental_number\" rel=\"follow\"><em>transcendental<\/em> irrational number<\/a>, i.e. it&#8217;s not the solution to any polynomial linear system with rational coefficients.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is Pi-Day 2008. A day in honor of Pi, one of the oldest and most mysterious mathematical constants known to man. A day in celebration of the works of dozens of great mathematicians and scholars. A day to revel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/celebrating-pi-day\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[618,619,617,863],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","tag-holidays","tag-math","tag-pi","tag-pi-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xDa-8S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2511,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/2511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neosmart.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}