Author Topic: Pi Contest in School (3.14159...)  (Read 3612 times)


This thread is not about how much of pi you can remember.

π is an irrational number so basically trying to memorize it past 3.14 is irrational

so who wants to sing the song~

Wow, what a completely useless competition. Instead of wasting money on making some contest about memorizing the closest approximation of Pi, why not fund a school academic decathlon team or a mock trial team? Or really anything that isn't just hapless memorization made useless to anyone who owns a graphing calculator...

i'm not sure a friendly number contest really has a "high budget"

graphing calculator...
scientific calculator*

Much cheaper, and supports pi. Of course either works, it's just a better example.

i'm not sure a friendly number contest really has a "high budget"
He said there was a monetary prize.

Also, I'm assuming that the contest is run by teachers. The teachers are on salary, which means if they dedicate 3 days to preparing for this contest, that's 10% of the teacher's monthly salary + whatever prize they're offering.

scientific calculator*

Much cheaper, and supports pi. Of course either works, it's just a better example.
A lot of scientific calculators represent Pi as an approximation instead of an irrational number. If you punch in (π*5) and it displays anything other than 5π, it's representing the number as an approximation.

A lot of scientific calculators represent Pi as an approximation instead of an irrational number. If you punch in (π*5) and it displays anything other than 5π, it's representing the number as an approximation.
memorizing 5000 digits of pi would still be an approximation... your point?

there is a inversely proportional relationship between the digits of pi you memorize and the number of friends you have

hey man i have no friends and i only memorized 3.1415

A lot of scientific calculators represent Pi as an approximation instead of an irrational number. If you punch in (π*5) and it displays anything other than 5π, it's representing the number as an approximation.
A graphing calculator is also approximating, just it's likely going to be a more accurate approximation than the scientific calculator.


memorizing 5000 digits of pi would still be an approximation... your point?
When did I say that having a lot of digits prevents a number from being an approximation?