What is Pi?

Oh jeez….um…forget Pi…watch ” The Black Whole” by Nassim Haremein for some really mind boggling physics equations. Seriously…amazing documentary!

Were you able to follow it?

I’ve watched it twice, for the most part yes, it goes far beyond the mathematics though, it is a wonderful and amazing journey into unity of all things! Nassim is a Swedish scientist that has put together the most current theories on creation. :-D He is very entertaining too!

From memory, 3.1415926535897932384626433832795. I won a lunch for that.

@jellyfish3232 Damn! Wow! What was your lunch?!

And…how did you do that?

@Dutchess_III
It was a grinder from Subway.
School contest.
Ah, the memories… The year before that, I won a bag of peppermint patty candies.

@jellyfish3232 Peppermints for what?

@Dutchess_III
Ah, I forgot to say. Same contest.
And I ALMOST won the spelling bee, but SOME judges don’t accept the Australian spellings of words… I put an “e’ on the end of boulevard. There are at least four streets in Australia spelled “boulevarde”.

Definition?—it’s the relationship/ratio between diameter and circumference of a circle : in math terms, c= Pd, d=c/P

Why it goes on forever—the numbers we use are really only symbols of what’s actually going on, ways for us to conceptualize and write down the ideas. Literally, letters, a language, for mathematics to be communicated. The abc alphabet we use is just approximations for the sounds we produce, and just the same way, the number alphabet an approximation. (Which helps explain why there are different bases, even—truly the numbers themselves are irrelevant, they’re just placeholders for thought.)

Decimals only work in an integer sense. Actual whole-number integers, there is a gap of infinite possibilities between 1 and 2—⅓, ½, ¾, being only three, are fractional annotations of that concept of partial. Of the other two that we use (er, commonly use?,) percent (which is really just fractions of x/100, ‘cent’ being a root for a hundred,) and decimals. 0.1 is equivalent to 1/10th, and goes along with the base ten we use ordinarily (notice the root of ‘deci’). Instead of times 10 up, 1, 10, 100, it’s divided by ten down. So .01 is 1/100, or 1%

The irrationality happens when the particular number we’re trying to describe can’t quite be with a decimal system (and Pi, actually, even the fractional version, 22/7, is an approximation.) Easier to understand this in, is ⅓, I think. Like ⅓ of 10 is almost-not-quite 3, ⅓ of 1 is almost-not-quite 0.3. 0.1 is left over. And 0.03 is almost-not-quite 0.1, there’s a left-over 0.01. On and on.

Basically it’s irrational, infinite, because our number system, even as it makes glorious discoveries and equational explanations, is imperfect. But it works, and we understand it, and can work around the imperfections with approximations and accepting an ‘almost’ that technically goes on forever trying to reach the number it describes.

(I hope that’s what you were asking?? and that it makes sense…)

@jellyfish3232 You know, I’m ‘Merican, but in my formative years I was raised on EE Milne and Rudyard Kipling. To this day it’s “colour” and pourch unless I stop and think about it… (although I was once told that ‘pourch” is not the British spelling?) I think…spelling just sucks!

Shew! There’s Dancing Mind!

infinity

@DancingMind Yes…I was asking, and it makes sense….but the mystery is…why can’t we actually PIN it down, right?

@SpatzieLover How do you use “infinity” to describe a circle? What is so special about a circle that we need infinity to attempt to describe it?

It’s the mathematician’s way of expressing a circle.

Wait, you’re a teacher and you’re asking us what Pi is?

The best teachers are the ones that ask questions.

I’m just trying to pin it down. Just trying to do the impossible, yet again.

@jellyfish3232 I know that Pi is 3.14… and you use it to find the area of a circle. I’ve known that since High School. I just want to know what it is. How…what is there about a circle that = infinity?

I once had an instructor describe it like this: You take a circle, straighten it out into a straight line, measure it, then when you try to put it back into a circle and measure it again there is a gap where the lines come together that shouldn’t be there….and that gap is….infinity. Blows my mind.

@DancingMind Thank you.

@Dutchess_III : )
and that’s interesting—the mystery, the infinite gap… Onward! the search for Pi!

@jellyfish3232—I’m still curious as to what mnemonic device you used to memorize all of those numbers! I still think that’s very cool! Was it a song? A rhythm?

@Dutchess_III
...Whoa.
That’s psychadelic, man.

Nassim Haremein has calculated that the formula for the entire universal structure, from black holes to the atoms in our bodies, all follow the same mathematical formulas to the letter.

We ARE black ‘w’ holes! All of us!

So ‘Pi’ plays into all of this about a gazillion times into infinity and beyond.

@DancingMind I know, right? And it’s like….well, I’m not the only one, or there wouldn’t be some mathematician who set some computer up to figure out the end….lots of years ago. And it’s still counting, far as I know.

@jellyfish3232 The best teachers are psychedelic! : )

@Coloma Now you’re scaring me and I’m home alone! Husband’s out of town! Eg Gads!

To a mathemetician, pi is the circumfirence of a circle divided by its diameter.

To me pie is the best part of a meal, tonight it is French chocolate silk pie topped with vanilla ice cream and mulberries.

Yes, @WestRiverrat. That is the formula for finding the area of a circle. But…there is a little bit of area leaking out of the damn circle and I can’t figure out where it’s leaking from!

Oh no! That’s where the Black Hole Whole Hole is!

@Dutchess_III if I knew the answer to that, I would be flying to Oslo for my Nobel prize.

@DancingMind IT IS! EUREKA!! You’ve hit upon something…but what, I’m not sure. But you’re probably right! beginners luck!

Pi also has a peculiar relationship to the square root of -1.

Slap on an “e” and it’s a delicious treat. :D

@ovisaries In fact Pi’s relationship to -1 involves an “e”
e^(i pi) = -1
A delicious mathematical treat.

The circumference and diameter of a circle are incommensurable, as are the side and diagonal of a square. That means that there is no unit of length L such that both the length of the circumference and the length of the diameter can both be divided into a whole number of segments of length L.

Here you go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_%CF%80_is_irrational

@Rarebear, your link doesn’t work for me. Here’s another one.

@ratboy
Thanks for the link, but I don’t read math.

@Dutchess_III What is so special about a circle that we need infinity to attempt to describe it?

Actually, it’s not just circles. I believe if you take any equilateral polygon and divide it’s perimeter by the longest distance between to ends of the shape, you will get an irrational number. For a circle, this would be the circumference divided by the diameter. For a square, it’s the perimeter divided by the diagonal (which results in a multiple of square root of 2). For an equilateral triangle, it’s the perimeter divided by the median (a line from one point to the centre of the opposite side), which gives you a multiple of 1/square root of 3. The square root of 2 and 3 are both irrational, unending numbers.

@Dutchess_III

Here is a very tangible, layman’s explanation (because I am a layman). I have a circle, with a circumference equal to A, and a diameter equal to B. I want to find a number X, such that I can divide both A into a number of segments of length X, and B into b number of segments of length X. A = a X and B = b X However, as ratboy explained, that is impossible. But let’s say, you don’t know this yet. So you go for trial and error.

You try to divide A by a number, then see if you an divide B by that same number. Nope, doesn’t work. So you try a smaller number. Still doesn’t work, so you keep trying continually smaller and smaller numbers. As it turns out, the only number X that satisfies A = a X and B = b X for a circle is zero, but if X = 0, then A and B = 0, and you can’t have a circle that has 0 circumference and 0 diameter. So, you want a number that is closest to 0, but not 0. What is that number? It’s 0.00000000000000000000000000000000…it goes on forever.

Wow….

That’s psychadelic

Ya man