March 14, according to the Yanks, is pi day - as in 3.14.
Typical facile, cutesy Americana - fast maths from the people who brought us fast food.
Typical facile, cutesy Americana - fast maths from the people who brought us fast food.
(Still, 3.141592653589793238 etc would kind of spoil their little numerical
pun.)
Anyway, this little seed of facile, cutesy Americana
must have found root in my cerebral cortex, because I woke up during the night
thinking about our little endless, transcendental friend, pi, in whom we believe.
In
particular, the weird coincidence that the eminently rational constancy of the relationship of any circle’s
circumference to its diameter, regardless of its size, is represented by a
mathematical constant which is, in fact, an irrational
number.
Then I began to think about Pythagoras and his
theorem, and how logical but bloody amazing it is that a squared equals b squared plus c squared.
Then
it occurred to me that Pythagoras’ theorem also applies to circles and spheres,
these values being, after all, merely the products of whole or fractional
numbers, the length of the diameter and our favourite little mathematical
constant.
In other words, for example, the area of a circle based on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the areas of circles based on the two adjacent sides.
In other words, for example, the area of a circle based on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the areas of circles based on the two adjacent sides.
I don't give a flying fuck if every pimply-faced
schoolkid on the planet already knows about this, I figured it out myself, in
my sleep, and IT'S MY FUCKING THEOREM.
Calls for a wee dram, I think. I might even get pi
faced.
Slainte!


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