3.1415926535

This dislexia is catching Pi! ;o) Here's what I meant to say:- For anyone who would like an interesting and fairly straight forward explanation of some of the topics that have been referred to in this thread I can thoroughly recommend this lecture by the World famous Stephen Hawking

For a recommendation. Why is the Dislexia carching Pi ? John.

Or do I mean 'Catching PI' *%@ Dom it!

It was a joke for Pi- oden, John, in View of my abysmal spelling. Sorry for the obvious confusion with the numerical constant :)

*grins - flutters wings and flies across site - totally free* No ones caught me yet ? ! errr that was that someone or something called disssy who was trying to catch me - wasn't it? Please leave spelling to witch's, wizards and faries or anyone from the illogical world of make believe The lexical interpretation of being dyslexic belies the reality of being dyslexic - in that spelling error's do occur but are not just the only consequence of seeing the world in a dyslexical way! Puddled ......... the mathematical difference between where one stands and where one lands if you jump and leave the ground long enough to move and there happens to a be a pool of water when your feet touch ground again

I realize that, i was laughing at my own Dislexia. Let's not bring Universal Constants in to the picture, Piodens head is herting. Thanks for your recommendation, I hope people enjoy and understand it.

wish I was working . . .

Ha! Pioden,The Dyslexical way? You speek as i speek, see as i see, this world around us is not what she pretends to be!

She is neither as locial as 3.1415926535 nor illocial as her flowing tides ! please continue with this interesting mathematical and scienticifical thing - even though my head is hurting ... I always laugh at my dyslexical mishaps too - even the amount of trouble they get me in what is so curious is that life would not be so interesting if it were just seen as plain and simple to understand - a mathematic line of probabilities - maybe that is why dyslexia is hard for some to understand because it wavers beyond that line - then people start calling you those two cruel words which I wont say or use 'Ps In' ------ or they say you talk in riddles because of the illocial way in which you work or at least seem to work and then you start to hide! No the world is not what she seems ...

By day or by night! she is like dreams that twist and turn, or like a mysterious character that hides menacingly in the shadow's of the night. Yes I know her well! she has been my freind and foe, she has lead me through the darkness to the mysterys of this world. She has wispered gently in my ear to tell me of things that perhaps I should not know, she is my friend and companion to the end,she will never go! Dxslexia - dxslexia I know you so well,.....God I wish I could spell.

Next Saturdays useless fact: the American for "bumbag" is "fannypack". I thought you were all getting too obsessed with Pi. [%sig%]

To A Poser. Euclidean Geometry is inadequate for the unification of the infinite/infinitesimal Universe. Remember! Mass is just another form of energy? Your 9x3=27 or pi x r2 "Sorry, No Equation Editer On This Plat form".... Can't Unify these dimentions, nor 'In Principal', can the Human mind visualise the concept of time as 4 dimentional space. We can talk about it,but can we truly visualise and describe it? Mathematics/Geometery, are the language of Science, Yes! but it must be translated into a system of concepts that serve to represent the complex of our experiences, such that we my perceive there obviousness with simplicity. To conceptulize volume measured in spherical units is like asking someone to describe a 4 dimentional axis in free space! The reason people find it difficult, if not impossible to do it, is because their minds are based on a 3 dimentional model, rather than on 4D concept. 4 Dimentional Phycics, is outside of our 3D perception, but I believe there were and are today, exceptions to this rule. If one could calculate the diff in volume between a spherical expantion with d=2, and a cube with precise unity and no experimental error, 'What would this tell you? and what would you make of the answer? The answer of course depends on the language that is used to interperate that results of the calculation. After all dear poser! Einstein first conceptulized an idea and only after time did he attempt to develope a language to describe and explain those ideas. With kind regards. John. For Dan. Perhaps that is why they dont understand?

I get days when I can't spell to save my life, John, (as I demonstrated earlier) and I'm forced to rely on my spell-checker. Surely you have a word processor - write your message in this box as usual (if you prefer) and then select and cut it, then paste it into your word processor, let it correct your spelling, then copy and paste it back into the message box. I say ‘copy’ because if there is a problem with the post you still have the message in your word-processor.

Thank you! Why didn't i think of this?..

That actually rattled me for a moment Ely, because I remembered that from 3rd year maths too, and the answer you give is right. 22/7 does give 3.1428. However, 22/7 is an approximation of pi, Archimedes calculated that 223/71 gives a better answer, but even this is still out. The problem is that the fraction itself is infitesimal. This is apparently the mnemonic for pi - How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. All of thy geometry, Herr Planck, is fairly hard...: And I retract my slur on Mississippi, it was Indiana.

The only trouble with a spell-checker is that although it may spell well - like a broken wand - it spells the word correctly but not be the word you wanted - as I have found and the results can be funnier than an incorrect spelling I got a spare broken wand if you want ........

Just got my own broken wand running and correcting on ABCtales. This text! Suddenly i can fly freee... Like a new pare of shews! do thay look good on me? Thanks for the offer, i am use to the Down sides of this one..

*smiles shyly*

My god.... Ive just turned completely grey...

And scoffs lots of Angel Delight and Fairy cakes no doubt ;o)

So no one can explain the losing trick count, eh? I thought at least one of you would be both a fine mathematician and a Bridge player. Pah!

zzzzzzzzzzzz WHA? zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wake up Flash, there must be something good on another thread. Fancy a bit of cheese Gromit....

It ain't like me to be pedantic, but a Rubic's cube has 26 cubes, the core being a spherical arrangement. Secondly, John may well know what he's talking about but I don't think anyone else here does, which kinda makes his quantum physics a bit superfluous. I only hope his theories are more accurate than his spelling.

It's been, as our Gallic friends across the water would say, très amusant to listen to the earlier parts of this discussion with their underlying assumptions about the primacy of a mathematical system centred around discrete numeric values and their concomitant hierarchical structures. This somewhat simplistic and 16th century view of the quantifiable universe, although serviceable for many everyday counting activities, has now largely been discredited by serious mathematicians. If we really want to understand the physical world around us at the quantum level we need to let go of these archaic arithmetic concepts and think instead about multi-dimensional numeric domains. These are amorphous and contiguous domains of quantity leaking (seemingly) discrete numeric values intertransitively into what we perceive as our four dimensional space-time universe. The only glimpse we get of this leaking irrational transcendentalism is in numbers like pi, e and of course our old friend 'i'.

Rice Krispies were my second choice.

not to mention his use of language. To state that language is part of the problem in such an utterly overly technical and complicated way is like trying to explain to someone from France what Cockney rhyming slang is and doing it in German! Try, if you will, to explain your thoughts in ways that will simplify things for the reader!.... ... oh, and there's an 'e' on the end of pie and some of them aren't even round so there! I don't care what Sir Conference or Ray dius say about it. Calculating the size of a sphere is easy enough as long as you don't mind being out a bit and, let's face it, who does really? I mean what would you be trying to work it out for anyway in reality? Maybe you bought a funky round suitcase and are trying to see if yoiu can fit an extra pair of speedos in. Maybe you're in charge of getting the helium for all the balloons at a wedding and need to work out how many gas bottles you're gonna need... who knows but I think we should all just calm down a bit and take it easy. alright?

sorry, but anyone who wants to know Pi to beyond the first six numbers for any reason other than they're an architect or 'master of circles' or anything job related, needs to be dragged into a field and shot in the back of the head.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzwhuhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Now your talking flash - sugar coated ones? You can if your very careful pin those throught the little air holes Its ages since I've had Angel delight not sure about fairy cakes that would be a little bit like ............

and don't forget the crackers Gromit...

Pi is an unfathomable quantity. Ask anyone who knows her!! :0

my biggest asset ... is that I am dyslexic too

Oh dear! Sorry John, I didn't realise, I feel a right tosser now. Still, your physics lesson is wasted here, most of us know more about getting pissed and having dodgy relationships than the composition of the universe.

or maybe that should be I have 3. assets

The Wife of Pi

Finally we get joy from Pi, thanks stormy for posting the link.

What many of you don't realise is that pi actually varies depending on the type of computer you are using. On a PC it comes out as 3.1415926 (correct to 7 decimal places), whereas on a Mac it's just plain old Apple Pi. Sorry.

it's brilliant isn't it?

Absolutely.

can't see what's wrong with having chips with it - a nice meat and potatoe Pi and chips ... Flash why on earth would anyone want to figure me out?

All this talk of pie is enough to make Richelieu's cat Perruque if you ask me. No one has, but there it is anyway.

I oughta know what I'm talking about, I did a bloody Physics degree. Dreyfuss, have you heard of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem? I think you might enjoy it. - The problem with any discussion on Quantum Physics is that it is too sexy (really), too many armchair philosphers (making no accusations - for all I know youve all got doctorates in it) have read one book or seen a channel 4 documentary and want to weigh in. But how many of them can solve a wave equation, that's what I want to know. QP these days is nothing but just a few really clever folk inventing unprovable theories about strings and the like. Solid State, and other branches of Material Science, are vastly more active and interesting - but nobody gives a hoot about them despite all the wierd and wonderful things they can do.

oh Pioden, thank you. It's like having a loved one mentioned at the oscars. I'm off to buy some from Asda!

*Feels very sad now, but cannot resist* Godel's Incompleteness Theorum is one of my most favourite things, that and the story of his US citizenship test, when fleeing Austria in the thirties. The examiner passed comment that he had been fleeing a fascist dictatorship and said "Well, that could never happen in America, thanks to our constitution" - Godel, who had been studying it bloody hard, stood up and pointed out exactly how an evil dictator could abuse the constitution, while his two friends tried to shut him up by pulling him back into his chair. Hey, we have tons of threads about football and smoking and royal family, I don't see why we can't have one maths thread. Dreyfuss - I'm not sure, but this sounds awfully close to that cultural relativism paper that got published in loads of science magazines as a hoax, claiming that mathematics was stuck in the past and was I suppose the equivalent in maths terms of the "Dead English white men" in literature. While imaginary numbers are all very interesting, the real ones are still extraordinarily useful. And while superstring theory is fascinating, people have built a cathedral of theories without making sure that the foundation actually exists as anything other than a mathematical concept.

I couldn't agree more about writing on the subject of maths, physics etc I find it all extremely fascinating and welcome more of it. It's just that, as a site of writers, we should find a way to make it readable and interesting to everyone

Fairy Delight, with a sugar coted topping that glistens like diamonds inthe pale of the moons fare light. Mmm! Sounds just about right..

I accept your retraction, Andrew. I just hope Mr Jones doesn't get upset at your redirection.

PI is a lot more important than Andrew would have us believe and lies at the heart of Quantum Mechanics which is a method of describing the Universe for those who realise it’s not square (people just prefer to think in straight lines). It is transcendental and associated with sines, cosines etc. and a more accurate vulgar fraction than 22/7 is 355/113 (which you might notice uses pairs of the first three odd numbers 1,3,5).

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, without one right angle in any apartment, and this defect ariseth from the contempt they bear for practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanical, those instructions they give being too refined for the intellectuals of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. (excerpt from A Voyage To Laputa - Gulliver's Travels) Wittgenstein says there are certain events in nature that cannot be deduced by scientific theory and formula….. "Who knows the laws according to which society develops? I am quite sure they are a closed book to even the cleverest of men." Similarly there exists mathematical statements that are true but cannot be proven. This is the heart of Godel's Theorum. The latest theories propose a Universe with from 10 to 26 dimensions and it was a collision in one of the higher dimensions which initiated the “Big Bang” (and you thought the Biblical account of Creation was unlikely ;o)