Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for February 16, 2017

Hey, when you grew up with slide rules, 3.14 was as good as it got (And you hoped the slide rule with pi and e marked on them really were more accurate than that…)

After reading Starman Jones by Heinlein, I memorized pi out to 30 places…

3.14159265358979 is about what I remember 55 years later… Never did need it to that accuracy…

When what you love doesn’t make it over to what it is you do.

I remember the first time using a slide rule wasn’t good enough. In a class called optics when we were calculating ray tracing.

How I want a drink – alcoholic, of course, after those heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics!-Issac Asimov

Can’t get my picture around right, tho. . .

Basically yes, but this is exaggerating a bit. For sure, no “scientist” would know Pi only as “3”. Scientists and engineers know what they use and need, to do rough estimates in discussions and thinking things through. They often know less digits as compared to “science fans”, but they often know more different items and quantities. As for Pi, you would at least know 3.14, which is enough for rough estimates and calculations made by paper and pencil. For real calculations you would use a computer anyway (I happen to know Pi as 3.141592, but I know that much digits since I was about 14 years old). The speed of light I happen to know exactly as 299,792,458 m/s because I learned this as a child from a physics encyclopedia and never forgot it. For any estimate calculation I would of course use 300,000,000 m/s.

I can remember up to 5 digits.

I remember 10 digits, but know now to calculate as many as needed for special applications:

atan(1) = Pi/4 <— converges very slowly

atan(1) = atan(1/2) + atan(1/3)

atan(1) = 2*atan(1/3) + atan(1/7) <— I use this instead

atan(1) = 4*atan(1/5) – atan(1/239) <— slower than the previous

atan(x) = x – x^3/3 + x^5/5 – x^7/7 + x^9/9 …

Me no memory pi digits! Me very good Science-ist!

For most real life calculations, 3.14 or 22/7 are fine. Most real world measurements are no more accurate than that anyway. If you need more accuracy, use a computer program with a stored value sufficient to match the accuracy of the rest of the figures involved. Remember, the answer to any calculation is only as accurate as the least accurate figure used.

I remember many years ago they just used 3 1/7.

The main difference is that science fans seem to think their 9th grade general science textbook is some sort of sacred scripture.

All I know is this; If my Mom cuts a pie into 8 pieces, there is more pie then if she cuts it into 6 pieces.

“Never memorize anything you can look up” – Albert Einstein

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slices