The only thing I can think of is that they wanted the math to be easy, and somehow thought 3 was easier than 5. But, that’s hard to believe because the only other numbers used were all 10s, so it’s 3101010 vs. 5101010.
Comment on PI is what
TheOakTree@lemm.ee 9 months agoI get that, it’s like rounding gravitational acceleration (on earth) to 10…
But why don’t they just use 3, preceded by a “pi is a little more than 3, but for now we’ll round down to 3.”
merc@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
jadero@mander.xyz 9 months ago
Especially given that using π=3 is accurate enough for most daily use by ordinary people for ordinary things.
F4lcon@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
3 or 5 is equally inaccurate. Engineers usually round it up from however accurate they need it. Scientists usually try to use it to as many digits of significance as they can.
3 or 5 is equally inaccurate, it doesn’t matter which you use if you think that’s accurate. Most people, engineers and scientists and mathematicians, use computers, but you’ll find they can get inaccurate pretty quickly too.
Again, 3 or 5 is a meaningless distinction to round an irrational number to. 3 is not an accurate value of pi in any sense and neither even is 3.14.
jadero@mander.xyz 9 months ago
I would draw your attention to the difference between mathematics and reality. Although mathematics is extremely useful in modeling reality, it’s important to remember that while all models are wrong, some are nonetheless useful.
Thus, a household gardener or storage tank owner or a builder of small boats can choose the appropriate diameter of hose, tank, or pontoon very effectively by rounding PI to 3 but cannot do so when “rounding” to 1 or 5. In these cases, it literally doesn’t matter how many decimal points you use, because the difference between 3 and any arbitrary decimal expansion of PI will be too small to have concrete meaning in actual use.
Under the philosophy you are promoting, it would be impossible to act in the physical world whenever it throws an irrational number at us.
I don’t know, but I suspect that there is a whole branch of mathematics, engineering, or philosophy that describes what kinds of simplifications and rounding are acceptable when choosing to act in the physical world.
The real world in which we act has a fuzziness about it. I think it’s better to embrace it and find ways to work with that than to argue problems that literally have no numerical solution, at least when those arguments would have the effect of making it impossible to act.
F4lcon@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Lol, my philosophy is exactly yours. Allow simplification as necessary, because to do otherwise is a pointless uphill battle. Only use as much accuracy as you really need.
In this case, it doesn’t matter if pi is 3 or 5 or 30. It’s just for teaching purposes. You would need critical thinking to determine how much simplification you can do, which is much better taught by simplifying things differently as you need, rather than just keeping pi as 3 and saying that works everywhere.
Yawnder@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Such an ordinary people thing to say.
jadero@mander.xyz 9 months ago
Just an ordinary person doing ordinary things :)