h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A521498
Thank u

Interesting.

Maybe it's just me but although this is factual, ideally an entry on Pi needs a bit more depth to it than just a listing to 10,000 significant figures.

Can we get this moved to the Writing Workshop? It is clearly not worthy of Peer Review.

1) The Peer Review forum title isn't filled incorrectly.
2) It's misspelt in its incorrect form.

I would like to see some information along the lines of:
- a description of Pi, why it is significant, who first calculated it.
- How it is calculated.
- it's practical application e.g. engineering? maths?
- it's side-application e.g. it is used in contests to find out how fast computers are, people like to quote it in memory constests.

I guess that will all be too much trouble though.

Regards,
BBS (SoHF)

Agreed.

Erm, guys?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A211500



- X

Hence wht I cant be bothered
2 right stuff allready writern.
cant some one just stick a link from
that 'interesting' PI stuff
to my Pi to 100000
places?
Dose any one know how it could (easily)
be made in to a screen insteed of
one long line?

PS the title is a cunning joke
HA HA HA

By writing new material for existing Edited Entries, this forum will be moved to the existing Edited Entry. When the update occurs for the Pi entry, the new material will be added to the exisiting one.

You will then receive Researcher credit for adding to the entry.

That's part of the whole point of the Guide (and incidentally why there are forums at the bottom of each entry) - so the whole world can contribute their bits to help make entries more complete. The update wasn't able to really get off the ground before because of a lack of resources (TPTB only have one Subeditor working on updating entries and I'm him).

It's difficult to do updates at the moment though because of all the forums that are hidden while pending moderation, but once the moderation is through the backlog, I'm planning to tear through the Guide and update like crazy.

So your contribution is valuable and very well might be included to the existing 'Pi' Edited Entry, but if you want immediate gratification, you might be better served by writing about a topic not already covered in the Edited Guide.

I hope this helps explain things a bit.

- X

One thing neither of these entries actually tells us is - what the practical application of Pi is. Anyone know?

It helps find the area and circumferance of circles.

Area of circle is = to Pi x the square of the radius
Circumferance of circle is = to Pi x twice the radius

At least I think so if my high school maths recollection is accurate.

There is no practical application
to finding Pi to more and more
decimal places.
Large strings of decimals are meaningless,
there is of cource a theory that a pattern
may be found this (as far as I know)
is not an idea widly entertained by serious
mathamatitions because of the complex
nature of Pi some people who ever (stupied people)
do not belive in irrational numbers the conquest of Pi
would be a huge victory for them.
mostly Pi is calculated for fun and to test the power
of new computers.

Pi is not equal to that big string of digits you put up. It is only approximately equal to it.

The calculation of Pi to many decimal places is useful for testing computer algorithms. It serves no purpose at all in the field of mathematics.

I know but I still think
its soooo much fun!LOL
Is this conversation slitly wroung placed
now?

In the book 'Contact', Sagan put in a bit that by calculating pi to extremes, you could find the meaning of life or something in binary code.

(I haven't read the book in ages, so I don't remember exactly how it went.)

You can allso find the meaning of life
by calculating 2 times root 2

Or you could read my review of the film "Contact" here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=101308&latest=1 But I don't remember writing about pi in it. And I came here to see if there was a new recipe for apple pie. Oh, well, ~continues through Peer Review looking for diamonds~

I just loved the humourous overtones in the article!

But are you quite sure you have all the facts right?

~^M^~erdo

It was in the novel GB.

I seem to recall it's how the book ended.

The book is on my "to be borrowed from the library asap" list.

Can we get this entry removed from PR (please) as:

1) it has gone off track.
2) it is not in the correct format.
3) it is not ready for recommendation.

Doh - it has moved.

BBS *unsubscribes quickly*