Hello, Readers! This is my second appearance on this blog, so I will remind you of my name. It is not Arabian11, RiddleGiver, or Min Sullivan, or even Minny. I am not the mad scientist who thinks he has to be angry to be a mad scientist, nor am I his partner (I will not mention her name, but her name is spelled out in the periodic table; look at the chemical symbols for the atomic numbers’ elements; the numbers are 5, 18, 5).
I am Mathematicus, a.k.a. Mathematikos, and I am here to talk about pi (greek symbol is π).
Talking about pi makes me hungry, but that is not the subject of my post; the subject of this post is mathematical π, which is a very useful number.
(Sorry about the run-on sentences, I am a mathematician, not an English professor.)
- radius 2 π=area of a circle
- diameter π=circumference of a circle
When most people think of π, they think of a yummy dessert. But not so in mathematics (which just sounds better than the shortened version, math; maybe I am a sesquipedalianist after all; but I am always going to be a mathematician at heart).
When most people think of mathematical pi, they think of 3.14 . But I do not think that, so you, my junior mathmeticien (that’s mathematician in Old French), must think my way. When I think of π, I think 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781… I am calling it a run-on number, meaning that it goes on for eternity (not repeating!). I can give you 3,000,000,000,000+ more digits, but for right now, you will have your head full (like ‘hands full’, but mentally) trying to memorize this number. Did I mention earlier that you are to memorize it? I am sorry if this is a shock to you. I am a little scatterbrained, and forgot to warn you of it ahead of time. Your test is this coming Friday, and (hint hint) the first thing on your test is to list the first 69 numbers in π, the numbers I gave you. By the way, you will have a pop quiz tomorrow that will count for 1/4 of your grade, and I believe that a question about π will be on it as well. So good luck! See ya next time!
