Friday, March 14, 2014

Link Round-Up: Pi Day


"Love is Like Pi" by Andrew Le
Okay, maybe not natural, but can a number be kinky?

Artwork
Elias’ Pi Page – Why is pi always written in the decimal number system? Read, listen to, and look at pi in the simplest of all number systems, binary.

Calculating Pi
Archimedes and the Computation of Pi – The ancient Greek mathematician’s approach for calculating pi.

Buffon’s Needle: An Analysis and Simulation – Buffon’s Needle is one of the oldest problems in the field of geometrical probability. It was first stated in 1777. It involves dropping a needle on a lined sheet of paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines on the page. The remarkable result is that the probability is directly related to the value of pi.

Buffon’s Needle Java Applet – Simulates the calculation of pi using a Monte Carlo method.

Computing the Nth digit - It used to be that to determine the Nth digit of Pi you had to compute all N digits. No longer. In 1997, David H. Bailey, Peter Borwein and Simon Plouffe published a paper (Bailey, 1997) on a new formula for computing Pi that allows the computation of the Nth hexadecimal digit without computing digits 1 - (N-1). Since then, others have followed with for formulas of decimal digits and digits in other bases.

Pi, ArcTangent, and the Fibbonacci Numbers - A discussion of the arctangent function and its role in computing Pi geared to high school level. (The arctan-based methods are no longer used to compute Pi, but that doesn't detract from their interest, especially as there is a tie-in with the Fibonacci Numbers.)

What Value Do You Get?  - If you need lots of digits but don't have a fast internet connection, then maybe you'll want to compute the first billion digits on your own PC. If so, this program claims to be the fastest.

Community
Join The Only Pi Day of Our Lives, a Facebook group dedicated to Pi Day. 

Digits of Pi
Pi to One Million Digits

Project Gutenberg Pi Listing – 1.25 million digits of Pi available as E-Text

General Information
Ask Dr. Math: About Pi – A Math Forum which includes a brief history of the number pi.

Notes on Pi – Offers an introduction to the most famous ratio in mathematics and one of the most ancient numbers known to humanity.

Olle the Greatest’s Page of Pi – Features memorizing techniques, poetry, and the 100 and 1000 clubs.

Talking About Pi – History, computational methods, literature, art, and more about the magic number pi.

Video Pi - A page containing 7 video clips that together comprise "The Story of Pi" For those who learn better by looking and listening than reading.

Wikipedia: Pi – Article about the mathematical constant, pi, including its history, appearances in formulae, trivia, and more.

Your Piece of the Pi – This site describes pi’s history, characteristics, and application. It also includes a distributed computing application for finding a large number of digits.

History of Pi
History and Philosophy of Pi – Probably no symbol of infinity in mathematics has evoked as much mystery, romanticism, misconception and human interest as the number and Greek letter of Pi. Interesting facts and trivia about Pi.

Pi Through the Ages – A brief, but intriguing history of Pi, including a Biblical reference.

Holiday
123Greetings.com: Pi Day – Online greetings in celebration of Pi Day.

Piday.org – The official website celebrating Pi.

Pi Approximation Day – 22/7 on the Aneristic Calendar. In U.S. notation, this is rendered as 7/22.

Slice of Pi, Anyone? – About Pi Day and the transcendental number, by John Shepler.

Wikipedia: Pi Day – Information about the day devoted to the number pi.

Interactive
Color Coded Pi – Play with Pi-inspired color patterns.

The Pi- Search Page – It is believed that any finite sequence of digits will eventually occur in the representation of Pi. Want to find where the first occurrance of your birth date is in the sequence of digits? (Note that this only searches the first 200 million digits so not all long sequences (11 digits or longer) will appear.)

Where is your Birthday – A search engine that tells you where in Pi your birthday first occurs.

Math behind Pi
Are the Digits of Pi Really Random? – An article reports progress towards answering the question from a theoretical perspective. This article claims that applying the standard tests used to evaluate “psudo-random sequences” gives the result that Pi is a good but not great source of random digits. Looking at the first 10,000 digits, most would conclude that it really isn’t random. But then, humans are very good at seeing patterns that aren’t there.

Dr. Math Answers Questions About Pi – Addresses student questions regarding how to calculate, formulate, estimate pi.

Elias’ Pi Page – Why is pi always written in the decimal number system? Read, listen to, and look at pi in the simplest of all number systems, the binary.

How Stuff Works: Pi – Animated graphic helps to explain Pi and the different ways of calculating Pi, with some related links.

A New Approach to the Universal Constant – A text that tries to prove that pi is 3.1416 exactly.

Memorizing Pi
How to Memorize Pi – Guidance on how to remember this diffuclt number to several decimal places.

Mnemonic Odes to Pi – A number of poems whose word lengths are the digits of pi. Lots of fun.

Notable Memorizers – World records of number of digits memorized, etc.

PiMemorisation -  Offers help memorizing Pi.

Merchandise
Joy of Pi – Book by David Blatner, telling the story of pi and humankind’s fascination with it, from Archimedes to the modern day Chudnovsky brothers.

Pi Bowties - You know you want a silk tie with a pi pattern on it!


Pi Poster – Buy or download a pdf of Unihedron’s snazzy Pi poster, featuring 350,390 digits of pi in lines containing 600 digits each.

Pi Shop – Provides accessories with Pi-Prints on them. Shirts, mugs and bags.

Music
Listen to Pi  - Felix Jung has created a delightful way to convert the first 10,000 digits of pi into music using a Flash-based animation.
Lucy Scale Developments – Pitch, Pi, and other musical paradoxes.

The Pi Symphony – An orchestral work whose melodic content is derived from the transcendental number Pi. You can purchase a CD of the synthesized version for $15.00. An orchestral work whose melodic content is derived from the transcendental number Pi. You can purchase a CD of the synthesized version for $15.00.

Poetry
Three poems by former CalTech student Eve Andersson: Beauty (Pi in several languages), Pi and Friends, Pi is Transcendental
 
Trivia
The first known celebration of the mathematical constant was held on 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Pies were consumed, and people marched around museum’s Pi Shrine.

March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday. Coincidentally, pi is used in Einstein’s Field Equations.

On March 12, 2009, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.  One of the reasons for the House of Representatives recognizing Pi Day is so that schools and educators can “engage (students) about the study of mathematics,” in light of US children falling behind other countries in math and science scores.

Pi Land – Quiz yourself to find out how much you really know about Pi.

Your birth date/Social Security number/cell phone number can be found in Pi.

Videos
David Letterman – Math savant Daniel Tammet talks with Dave about how he recited 22,514 digits of Pi on Pi Day 2004.

Happy Pi Day Domino Spiral 

It's Pi Day! - Rebecca Black Parody 

Maths Pi Song – A song about Pi.

Pi Day Rap – A parody of the rap theme of the of the film 8 Mile.

There are, of course, many pi tributes on YouTube, including this pi song, this short "pi is exactly three!" excerpt from The Simpsons, this keyboard pi movie, and this awesome rap. And more! Here's Mathematical Pi (sung to American Pie). Another brilliant pi rap.

What is the “Pi” Song? – A brief promo for the PBS series Wired Science.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...