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Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first 1000 Digits of Pi
- ctdonath 14y agoI'm all for obsessing over computing & visualizing pi ... but ... wow. That's nuts.
- Tipzntrix 14y agoAnd people are worried about oil? Not in the Bay Area!
- naturalethic 14y agoWhat would happen if you made Pi = 1, then adjust all other numbers accordingly?
- ctdonath 14y agoRelativistic mathematics. I think my head just exploded.
- philh 14y agoμ -- To clarify, that's not a thing you can meaningfully do. It makes sense to define your units such that, e.g. c=1, because c has units (distance per time). You're really adjusting your units, not your numbers. But π is dimensionless. Diameter and circumference are both measures of distance, and they are never equal. If you say "this number times one equals that number", and the numbers aren't the same, then when you say "one" you don't actually mean "one" the way anyone else speaks about it. (By convention: whenever you can do multiplication, if there's something called "one", then "one" is the multiplicative identity.) There's nothing to stop you from, e.g. renaming all numbers x -> x/π. But you wouldn't gain anything; you'd just say things like "1/π squared is 1/π", and "1 squared is π", and "π times 1/π is π". It looks weird, but what's happening is perfictly ordinary, just with weird names.
- anonymouz 14y agoOne could sort of satisfy naturalethic's wish by choosing a numeral system with pi as basis. Then pi would have digit representation '1' in this system. And yes, mathematicians have studied transcendental bases for numeral systems (Knuth in particular, see the short paragraph on http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Base.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Base.html which explicitly mentions pi as basis). Of course it's not a good idea to base your day-to-day numeral system on pi, but I know that at least for irrational bases there are actual applications.
- mej10 14y agoThis is a good point as well, and more in line with what the original commenter was asking. Using pi as a base is even briefly discussed on wikipedia. I had some interest in using e as the basis for a while, since (as is pointed out on wiki) "The base e is the most economical choice of radix β > 1 (Hayes 2001), where the radix economy is measured as the product of the radix and the length of the string of symbols needed to express a given range of values." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_representation#Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_representation#Exam...
- jerf 14y ago"One could sort of satisfy naturalethic's wish by choosing a numeral system with pi as basis. Then pi would have digit representation '1' in this system." I'm pretty sure pi comes out to 10 base pi, not 1 base pi.
- anonymouz 14y agoAh, right, of course! Still, I think this is the closest possible to the wish the OP had.
- blacksmythe 14y agoNumeral systems are not restricted to the set (base N). "a numeral system with pi as basis" could be (base pi)pi, where pi =-> '1' and pipi -> '10' and unity -> '0.1'.
- nthitz 14y agoSounds a little irrational...
- mej10 14y agoDepends on what you mean by setting pi = 1. You can subtract (pi - 1) from every number, giving you a translation of the real numbers. You can divide everything by pi, giving you a slight compression that ultimately doesn't mean anything. You could use it to create a field extension of the rationals, giving you a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_number_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_number_field where {1, pi} is the basis. But to answer your question: probably nothing.
- anonymouz 14y agoCareful, none of these actually "set pi=1". Also, since pi is transcendental, the field would not be an algebraic number field, but in fact isomorphic to the rational functions over Q, i.e., quotients of polynomials with coefficients in Q.
- mej10 14y agoYep, you are right. I can't believe I forgot that.
- alimoeeny 14y agoHow did they do that?
- modernerd 14y agoThe artist used a company called AirSign, who fly five aircraft in formation to write messages as a dot matrix: http://www.airsign.com/skywriting.php http://www.airsign.com/skywriting.php You can read more on the artist's website here: http://ishky.com/pi/ http://ishky.com/pi/
- matthiaskramm 14y agoLooks like Pi is still ahead, in the Tau vs. Pi arms race.
- archgoon 14y agoI hate tau. An event like this should be viewed as a cool nerdy thing, a celebration of the culture and fun of mathematics. Thanks to tau, nerds start bickering over a senseless and useless distinction as to whether a factor of two should be present in a transcendental constant. Did we really need another pointless division and source of argument in our society?
- gms7777 14y agoThey really should have done this for Pi day. I may have missed it in the article, was there anything significant about their choosing yesterday for this event?
- dkasper 14y agoInteresting that it was a failed kickstarter but they did it anyway. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ishky/pi-in-the-sky?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ishky/pi-in-the-sky?ref=...
- danielweber 14y agoThe headline here at HN really needs to add the word "Sky" between "Area" and "With", put "Skywriters" in place of "Arists", or both.
- adam_freidin 14y agoSaw this and took this picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-adam/7983967654/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/-adam/7983967654/in/photostream They could have used a time other than noon, my eyes were watering at the blinding sun.