Happy PI Day from Europe

[Raymund Heuvel]

Americas: be patient, arriving soon ....

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Mar/14 already in easternmost South America.

Consider the following polynomial equation:

3*x^34 - 1000000000000*x - 240000000000000000 = 0

Find the positive real root to 9 decimal places. Notice the digits in the coeffients are 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 (not related to the answer).

Edited: 13 Mar 2012, 11:52 p.m.

[C.Ret]

Hi,

Ah! The difficult task was to count all the zeroes! lol
I have to print it and remake it twice to be OK! I perhaps need to call my ophthalmologist for a visit.



To the attention of those who have, like me, a hard time counting the zeroes on their ten fingers:
3.x³⁴ - x.10¹² - 240×10¹⁵ = 0



A positive solution is a good 9-decimals approximation for a PI day !

Edited: 14 Mar 2012, 5:24 a.m.

[Valentin Albillo]

Hi, Gerson:

Very nice. This is my very own contribution which I serendipitously discovered some 3.14 decades ago:

The simple expression:

evaluates to Pi correct to nearly 10 digits.

Best regards from V.

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Hi Valentin,

3.14 decades ago I had only half a dozen digits:

sqrt((tan(arctan(0.7) + 2*arctan(0.07)))^2 + 3^2)

I had no calculator then, but I had a 7-decimal logarithm table :-)

Best regards,

Gerson.

[Matt Agajanian]

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a geek. I get the joke!

[Glenn Becker]

My pi t-shirt (first 5000 digits) is all ready! =]

[John B. Smitherman]

Thanks Raymund. I actually celebrated Pi at 7:22 pm last night. Is that close enough? ;-)

I recently watched the movie Pi which was released in 1998:

Pi

Regards,

John

[Dominic Richens]

I'm boycotting Pi day - Pi is just plain wrong.

Pi is wrong

See you on June 28th! (which also happens to be my half-birthday...I think that might be slightly ironic)

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

22/07 is a slightly more accurate Pi Day (which also happens to be my birthday :-)

[Jean-Michel]

Hello,

I'm also boycotting this so called Pi day, but for another reason.
I find the American date format absolutely not convenient and prefer by far the Europen one (day/month/year). I find strange to begin the date with the data that changes in the lowest way (year), and not by the one which changes in the fastest way (day).
Do other people here share my point of view?
Hence, no Pi day for me...

That said, year/month/day format is convenient for ordering of files named this way '2012-03-14_file_name".

Anyway, enjoy your Pi day!

Kind regards.

[Walter B]

Bonjour Jean-Michel,

I share your view that Y-M-D is nice for keeping your files properly sorted.

Just FYI, Y-M-D is the Chinese date format. The US-American is a bit distorted with M/D/Y - forth and back again. Cf. pp. 29 and 35 of "the manual" ;-) The drawback of the European format is we can't have a PI day, however.

[Jim Yohe]

I've been using the Y-M-D format in everything (filenames, dated documents, signed papers, etc.) for about 12 years now. I didn't realize beforehand how easy it was to sort files so I've used it anywhere I wasn't forced back into the M/D/Y format that, for example, IRS still uses.

Still, without the M/D/Y we'd be without Pi days. FYI, in two more years (should we make it past the cataclysmic event purported to happen this year on December 21th - Mayan calendar reference) we'll have a Pi day using both the M-D and M-(2 digit)Y formats. ;-)

Happy Pi Day!

[Jim Yohe]

I suppose that would be Pi day and Pi year ...

[Lode]

Personally, I use DMY in normal daily usage (being European). But I use YMD quite often on the computer, because dates like 20120314 sort nicely.

But I find the American MDY format very confusing because it is neither ordered from smallest to largest, nor from largest to smallest.

[Jeff O.]

Feel free to boycott, but then you’ll miss all the fun!

Quote:

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Do other people here share my point of view?

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Apparently quite a few do:

Only magenta in the above exclusively uses the MDY format. Cyan, with population totaling some 3,200,000,000 uses DMY. But yellow, some 1,500,000,000 persons, uses YMD, not sure how they express it if they drop the year. My guess is MD, so that may be the way of the future.

I can see the logic of the DMY format, and would not mind that format in the US. But I do not anticipate it changing any time soon, as it is ingrained in our culture. At least using the MDY format is not nearly as harmful as our continued use of the US Customary Units system of weights and measures.

The other major difference between the US and the rest of the world (OK, not the only other difference, but perhaps the only one suitable for discussion here) is of course the dot vs. comma for radix character and digit grouping separator. In this case, I believe the US convention is actually more logically consistent. My opinion only, no offense (or offence, if you prefer) intended.

[Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil)]

Hi, Jeff;

I agree with the dot as a radix mark, I prefer it for comma in that matter. It seems more logical to me, too.

I have been using YMD reference myself, mostly in directories and when naming some grouped, date-ordered file. If you name dates in YMD, a single number-based sorting will sort dates as well, no need to specific algorithms.

Cheers.

Luiz (Brazil)

[Jeff O.]

I was under the impression that today's date is expressed as 14-3 in Europe, and South America, and Asia, and Australia... :-)

Regardless of your preferred format for presentation of the date, Pi certainly deserves its own day, of course.

[Walter B]

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today's date is expressed as 14-3 in Europe, and South America, and Asia, and Australia

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For Europe, it's 14.3.2012 today. There are different formats in Asia as your map shows :-)

Edited: 14 Mar 2012, 12:40 p.m.

[Lode]

Hmm, 14-3 somehow looks weird. I guess it's more like 14/3.

[Jeff O.]

In the US, both the dash and forward slash are commonly used, i.e. you wil see both 3-14-2012 and 3/14/2012. The dot (3.14.2012) is not as common.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

In Germany it's just the dot. Period! ;-)

In spoken language we follow what's written. When "14" denotes the cardinal number ("vierzehn") then "14." is the ordinal "der Vierzehnte" (14th). When we write down a date such as 14.3.2012 it's pronounced accordingly: "Der Vierzehnte Dritte Zweitausendzwölf" which literally translates to "The fourteenth (day of the) third (month of the year) two thousand and twelve".

[Eddie W. Shore]

Quote:

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Americas: be patient, arriving soon ....

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HAPPY PI DAY! My favorite day of the year!