[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] 🥧 Easy as pi?

Sun Mar 15 03:53:42 PDT 2026

India/Indiana in simpler times:

"One of the most significant contributors to the discovery of Pi was the 
renowned Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata. In his work, the 
Aryabhatiya, written around 499 CE, Aryabhata offered an accurate 
approximation of Pi, equivalent to √10 or approximately 3.1622. "

"The Indiana Pi Bill of 1897 [3] (House Bill 246) was a notorious, 
failed attempt to legislate mathematical truths, which implied various 
incorrect values for Pi - ranging from 3.2 to 4 - rather than 
specifically setting it to √10."

On 2026-03-14 19:39, Peter Albin via LCTG wrote:

> From a friend ...
> 
>> [1]
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> EASY AS PI? NOT EXACTLY.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> MARCH 14, 2026
>> 
>> March 14th -- 3/14 -- has become a mathematics holiday. Pi Day. 
>> Beloved of nerds everywhere. Including yours truly. But for me, it has 
>> a special meaning. I've always felt that Pi Day is _my day_.
>> 
>> When I was in high school, a math teacher proposed a competition: who 
>> can memorize the most digits of pi, the famously endless number so 
>> long that every phone number and social security number ever issued -- 
>> or that will ever be issued -- lies somewhere along its length. So 
>> long that if you encoded the digits as letters, you could find every 
>> work of literature ever written, past or future, somewhere in that 
>> infinite expanse.
>> 
>> I took that challenge and devoted a week of pure teenage obsessiveness 
>> to the task. I maxed out at 200 digits. For a few days I held it 
>> together. Oh, how proud I was! But before long I could only muster 
>> 150, then 100. 50 and ... hubris begat defeat. I had flown too close 
>> to the blinding light of mathematical perfection.
>> 
>> What I didn't appreciate then -- what nobody tells you in high school 
>> -- is that the digits are almost beside the point. They're a mere 
>> freak show next to the true beauty of pi.
>> 
>> The symbol π was introduced by the Welsh mathematician William Jones 
>> in 1706 and popularized by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. It's 
>> thought they chose π because it's the first letter of the Greek word 
>> _peripheria_ -- meaning periphery, or circumference. Before that, 
>> mathematicians simply called it "the ratio" and wrote it out longhand 
>> every time. Obviously, that explains the appeal of crunching it down 
>> to a single Greek letter. (Though just try to figure out how to type 
>> it into your essay - _convenient_ might not be the word that comes to 
>> mind ...)
>> 
>> Pi is actually easy to express as a ratio -- circumference divided by 
>> diameter, very clean -- but the moment you try to calculate the actual 
>> number, things get gloriously messy. That's why it's called 
>> "irrational" -- it's a real number that simply cannot be written 
>> precisely in digits. Ever.
>> 
>> And here's the thing about pi: It's constantly popping up in the 
>> strangest places. It just doesn't know how to stay in its high school 
>> trig lane! It is embedded in the formula that describes how a pendulum 
>> swings. It's lodged in the equations governing electrical signals 
>> traveling through your nerves. Drop a needle randomly on a floor of 
>> parallel lines and the probability it crosses one involves pi -- a 
>> result so bizarre it has its own name, Buffon's Needle. Pi appears in 
>> the distribution of prime numbers. It shows up, uninvited, in 
>> Einstein's field equations describing the curvature of spacetime 
>> itself.
>> 
>> Which brings me to my favorite footnote about this particular day. 
>> March 14th is also Albert Einstein's birthday. Einstein spent his life 
>> describing the universe with mathematics -- and pi was never far from 
>> the equations. Whether this is the universe's greatest coincidence or 
>> its most elegant inside joke, I honestly cannot say. But at NOVA, 
>> where we've spent decades exploring Einstein's legacy, it feels 
>> exactly right.
>> 
>> NASA navigates interplanetary spacecraft using just 15 digits of pi. 
>> To calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the observable 
>> universe to within the width of a single hydrogen atom, you'd need 
>> only 39. My 200-digit teenage party trick was, it turns out, 161 
>> digits of pure exuberant excess.
>> 
>> But I don't regret a single one of them. Pi is one of those places 
>> where math stops being a tool and starts being a window -- onto 
>> something strange and beautiful about the universe we live in.
>> 
>> Happy Pi Day!
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> WATCH
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> [2]
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
> 
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Links:
------
[1] 
http://links.nova.wgbh.org/u/click?_t=ec210e94258b4741874e196b0b576467&_m=3d82bdf3907c4ef4a340ce5ba0508a2d&_e=D93BMHxHvIXsvTqH2XJJpH4txKFfuUHu4yM4CggJCUCVScK30dc6rf3_1Au42ZNVlyn0VZERhzE2OyAEAbgSfowdSkinUHoMfBjit9ZX-3p_hzgewH-2dgTETu4BIhgaByQ44aArmxDZBel2Ka7yj6bRbg67_-tsmEEhu-jcX9VKc5kqxfvp4z_jd1vypPVRB7XZqsGeRP4zaxk6BmWRvodjvFGD-v0yOSuZlEZ1XC5l6hlRUo8LSffUWaxABh00bZr4vis-II_nIFywCxqyrQ7wcACwlP8YPXobzMy1TTkF2vqsCvTaIHzmAn-INe99FCoVJ9DbpzeG7yv8Q6LCa5kfZIJeCpKyhN8F_PqqoN-W0UlofxUdEjzQABmZT8R80Z8Jdl32bKUMcdNb84jFK9SUHOzrW1DG8UdkhisxM--MjNE2uKHCB3Z09G5xnGnVpaFwvqJYg8IxXvkM2kYsnbIKE3PkoZLpk8q2aIdHma6dYRuqMMCnU1kIrJZEyZawHm6RKgOA5fC5EIId_4d0g1t_llWkvPA9Ty-OM2BkECsEJjQWapHOZ6cVNE24SaJGQ-7lwd-WBZ_5iWyiR93gAjUDtpnEb31cDeO1DjfDLYKfoOpVUsMmwKtaiKjncROK1zWPG6cVSQXPmFPFLnwU_ZOP67xfJRc98iwpT7471ZkD4q2fE9YLr2ZS-_jPYvo8FWH60xT3b2uRM4kF0lq1aA%3D%3D
[2] 
http://links.nova.wgbh.org/u/click?_t=ec210e94258b4741874e196b0b576467&_m=3d82bdf3907c4ef4a340ce5ba0508a2d&_e=D93BMHxHvIXsvTqH2XJJpHI3cxq-zxLa5HAApgsGRpXj-xNwfGKUsPn1m226GSvdoArpGFS8g9T0FDmEzEi01lPhOWjeL6lGNMT5OtsXeQ02dSkZCgBDoyGqC0T53Yzf78KyEi7dfWLJHFwAQkL-Efv2ECchun3xn4XjMlDD7vHEMbRQIgzsrywDdAVJjgfpm0IGie2uKLIvpNnlFoyKgx0oMQsStyrlFeKs15UTQhw0DQhjE0seoPADK1xfgr7w-e5cA3pkkCauXhYn4wtqI5dAMXvXbIVKusNFzWULZ4B3rIOApGUH9Cj8wXP7JHqkPxB3CZP-ZHChriWZPwQKkND-qS04vgcoTtaOXVYshpdhFEdR6HuE5QlEV7IZbrZC6RiPF1hHxWrirRe6Lc0L5sZA7ScdLozeI3Y2re9lIFptbodIktXgfRJt3rBaGjqxP2vw4En6EcSIy7ku2qYyqCZY3C9iwYfHd9QPwm7Zyuk5Sd_bZRq3U0qOfYak0oeC
[3] 
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f878827b16cbbc7b&sxsrf=ANbL-n5-p3W-sqO9rJacA89Y-M5k4mMSZA%3A1773570066299&q=Indiana+Pi+Bill+of+1897&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjeh6zJ16GTAxWnAHkGHeTxNGYQgK4QegQIAhAB&biw=882&bih=453&dpr=3&mstk=AUtExfCbsjU4oN-4vFHB26NcYmexjNecHk2Fl8WDNtvosbFo6fGDNLrkEuXIE9RyN1mVA5bFQhDhN1K0j_zyBWvoGJDiw3rSRzdiBEnDyKqGyBU2-qrj8p71e4pc-BTFpJ-dpk-sUx6xYH1WeI0758UwMGVkWNBqmXuweMxoiobIkz1-MbB7AIfE7idPEG3ixrFtR9Eq39bd7tiZqQH-a4cDVQgwbl3xS9Wpsq7IeG4KTndAcUqze8qhiRv8Vhrv4reNVxwdvh1gtkE3Px1iYR8QMD1d&csui=3
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