Swivel
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Happy two-year anniversary! May the power of pi bless your day today.

Best wishes on everything from a recent bar goodie solver. Long live DROD!

bradwall
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Ditto here, Erik.

Ezlo
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Yay! Nothing else to say...

ErikH2000
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Hey, thanks! Me and Brittany are going to Atlanta tomorrow for our anniversary. (And for one DROD-related event that I'll describe once I'm back.)

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

eytanz
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Happy anniversary!

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

Pinnacle
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---Happy anniversary!---


____________________________
Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Tscott
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Hey! I was told there'd be pie in this thread!

Happy anniversary!

____________________________
And I can recall our caravel: a little wicker beetle shell with four fine maste and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel. O my love, O it was a funny little thing to be the ones to've seen.
-Joanna Newsom "Bridges and Balloons"

Tim
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Yay! Congratulations!

Swivel
Level: Master Delver

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I was in school when I posted the first post of this thread, and let me tell you, since then my belief in the powers of pi has been shaken. Pi day wasn’t even mentioned in math class, except for one homework problem where there’s a shaded area in a circle and darts and probability. Someone asked me why anyone cared and I commented on how beautiful it was, and how a circle on a sphere has a curved diameter and pi is different, and so on and so forth. The response? “Matt, it’s just a #@$!*?|& number. Nobody cares about that @$#% [note different arrangement of symbols]. What about socialization?”

I tell you, I felt hurt. In Social Studies I commented to some classmates how none of my teachers mentioned Pi day. My teacher heard the comment and still refused to mention it, rather gesticulating in the general direction of the notebook I had left in class from yesterday. What’s worst of all is that an intelligent acquaintance I sit next to in science said that he didn’t care either! I also waited anxiously for 1:59:26 PM, but I glanced at the clock just several seconds too late. Does anyone care about pi, or about e? Can anyone give the formula for phi? Do people live in ignorance of the acceleration of gravity? Oh, the shame!

I didn't quite know where else to put that rant. It's not really a quick rant, and did you notice the nerdish tone? I tried hard to achieve that. Actually, I didn't. It comes naturally.

coppro
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I once managed to memorize 150 digits. Now all I have is

3.141592653589793238

Znirk
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Being in an area where dates are notated day before month, yesterday was decidedly non-special. But I can celebrate close-enough-for-most-applications day on 22nd July.

---

[Last edited by Znirk at 03-15-2006 02:05 AM : twenty-seconth? It really <i>is</i> late.]

Briareos
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coppro wrote:
I once managed to memorize 150 digits. Now all I have is

3.141592653589793238

Wait a second - I though pi was another way of writing the number 4?

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

Znirk
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Briareos wrote:
I though pi was another way of writing the number 4?

Only in cases where pie are square.

Swivel
Level: Master Delver

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Speaking of holidays, today is the Ides of March. So go out and assassinate your favorite political leader!

Just joking.

gamer_extreme_101
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Only in cases where pie are square.

Pie are squared? No they aren't...pie are round.

Man, I love that joke. Nerdy, but cool.

____________________________
--That guy with a million different aliases since he doesn't like this name anymore.

Briareos
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:

Only in cases where pie are square.

Pie are squared? No they aren't...pie are round.

Mmmh... pie...

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

coppro
Level: Smitemaster
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I always thought that pie are round too.

Strange how stupid mathematicians can be.

Oh wait, wrong forum.

*runs away*

Maurog
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I remember the first time I came to understand what pi actually *is*. Not what it means or how to use it in all kinds of calculations, been doing that all the time, but how to visualize it. Then one day it came to me... if you imagine the number 4 as a 2x2 square, pi is the circle inside that square!
It was like a revelation - pi to 4 is what circle is to square.
All the formulas suddenly made sense - the area of a square with "radius" r is 4*r^2, that's why the area or a circle is pi*r^2. The perimeter of a square with "radius" r is 8*r or 2*4*r, the perimeter of a circle 2*pi*r. I wish the teachers would explain it to me like that instead of just filling my head with formulae that we use but don't really understand.

____________________________
Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!

coppro
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Now, thank you for that. Now explain why 3/4*pi*r^3=volume of a sphere. Three Pies!

Pinnacle
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Pi Land
Home of 1,000,000 digits and more fun* stuff
As to Coppro's question, the answer is a resounding
"I have no clue whatsoever."

-Rob

*If you're anything like me, it's fun.


____________________________
Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

---

[Last edited by Pinnacle at 03-16-2006 09:50 PM]

Maurog
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"No clue whatsoever?" Why, that's easy as pie! Let me explain...

Once you go to 3 dimensions you have to keep in mind that 6 to pi is what cube is to sphere and work from that. Why 6 and not 4? Because you use 3 dimensions and not 2, silly!

So if the volume of a cube with "radius" r is 8*r^3, the volume of a sphere is 8/6*pi*r^3 or 4/3*pi*r^3 (coppro had a mistake).
And the surface area of a cube with "radius" r is 24*r^2 which makes the surface area of a sphere 24/6*pi*r^2 or 4*pi*r^2.

____________________________
Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!

mrimer
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Maurog wrote:
Then one day it came to me... if you imagine the number 4 as a 2x2 square, pi is the circle inside that square!

Yeah! I understood this when once reading about a Monte Carlo algorithm (uses randomness to empirically determine a value) for calculating pi:

Set Tally to 0.
For (Total = 0; Total<as much as you want; ++Total)
{
 Choose a random (x,y) point from (0,0) to (1,1)...i.e., inside a unit square.
 If it's inside the unit quarter-circle, add 1 to Tally.
 // Pi ~= (Tally*4) / Total
}

It converges slowly.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 03-16-2006 10:08 PM]

Tscott
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gamer_extreme_101 wrote:

Only in cases where pie are square.

Pie are squared? No they aren't...pie are round.

Man, I love that joke. Nerdy, but cool.

Pie are square.

____________________________
And I can recall our caravel: a little wicker beetle shell with four fine maste and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel. O my love, O it was a funny little thing to be the ones to've seen.
-Joanna Newsom "Bridges and Balloons"