5 ms·
Bearing in mind, I'm not a mathematician, so this is just an idle musing... Is PI always going to be an infinitely irregular number?... or is that a factor of
by ClapperHeid 4y ago
Bearing in mind, I'm not a mathematician, so this is just an idle musing...
Is PI always going to be an infinitely irregular number?... or is that a factor of our base 10 counting system. And is there a possibility that, in some other base, it could be regular?
What if the aliens from the planet Zarquon Minor have 7 or 8 or 9 or 13.... digits on their hands and use a 7 or 8 or 9 or 13.... base counting system? Is it possible that, using a different base, PI would turn out to be a much more manageable number. Might Zarquonian schoolkids learn that PI = thribble point snimp ?
- graderjs 4y agoI don't think with regular integer bases, because integers can all be decomposed into primes, so you can create relations between different base representations, and if it's infinitely irregular in one, you can't wipe that out by converting it into another integer base....But maybe non-integer bases? Maybe base-phi? Or maybe some alternative to continued fractions? https://oeis.org/A001203 https://oeis.org/A001203
- mPReDiToR 4y agoI've long toyed with the idea of π being "1". I have no idea what " 2" is, but basing a mathematical system on what appears to be a universal constant seems like a great way to communicate with aliens. Maybe 1 is "1” but two is π, three is the golden ratio ...