FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for October 25, 2012

what the %*%@?

Nice, but I’d keep the “…” one; saves plenty of money in the Foxes’ account and leaves plenty if pumpkins for other people in town to make jack-o’-lanterns, roast the leftover seeds, make pumpkin bread and REAL pumpkin pie.

those pumpkins are not rational

My parents and I used to treat the inside of the pumpkins with “Captan” fungicide solution and put little 7 watt electric lights inside them instead of candles. They’d last a week that way.

3.14159265358979323846… as I remember it.

One guy I knew in college memorized it to 110 places!

I figured 20 was good enough for rough calculation!! :-)

I know! That’s why I figured that 20 places was more than enough! I’m an engineer, not a philosopher!!

Didn’t Congress pass a law making Pi equal to 3 to make calculations easier?

That’s dangerous! How could we differentiate pi from e then?

Pi to 20 places will enable you to calculate the circumference of the Earth’s orbit around the sun in millionths of an inch.Assuming, of course, that your value for the distance from Earth to the Sun is of equal accuracy.

This awakened the nerd in me and made him laugh. I love pumpkin pi.

I knew it to 111 digits once. Fox Trot started me on that little project. A different strip though—something about the kid helping his sister with her homework.

it’s stuff like this that made me change my college major from ocean engineering to business computer systems … that and not passing Physics 101 in 5 different attempts, but that’s besides the point … was able to squeeze a 4 year degree into 8 years … and found later since being a software tech support rep for 18 years that my job experience at McD’s was more useful than college ever was.

The reference to PI being exactly 3 comes from an obscure reference n the Bible where it gives the dimensions of a well cover as so many cubits around and so many cubits across.

The Bible could be literally true if the cover was bowed enough in the third dimension so as to extend the diameter so as to make the ratio equal to 3.

To carry Pi to the extreme:

http://www.piday.org/million.php

Well said! I’m writing you in on my ballot!

I thought it was the ratio of the circumference of the pumpkin to its diameter.

I was stopped in an airport once for carrying a calculator and an algebra book. They said that I had Tools of Math Instruction.

I only memorized pi to 10 places, matching any of my calcultors

I actually did this about a decade ago. I wonder if I got the idea from the original of this strip?

Nerd humor! Cute!

A friend of mine said his PIN is the last four digits of pi.

Thank goodness my teachers only needed me to use the standard 3.14 digits of pi.

Very funny.

When you see that on halloween, you know you’ve arrived at the math geek’s house.

Carved pumpkins in Southern California only last a couple of days, but we discovered that in southeast Alaska they last a week at least if they’re outdoors. (It’s as if they are refrigerated.)

[Groannnn …]

But, this one’s funny, too.

There is a Wikipedia article indicating that a bill was proposed but not passed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

then there is: the Ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter: “Eskimo pi(e)”