F4lcon

@F4lcon@discuss.tchncs.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of skills in the world, some more useful than others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s impressive. Mental math isn’t one of my talents to be honest. And let’s agree to disagree about the disinformation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s interesting. I imagine if you do that long enough you’ll just approximate with pi intact as well intuitively.

  Anyways nice conversation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think you understand what infinitesimally means! It means the opposite- you want to use ‘infinitely’ there.

  Now, not being a condescending asshole, I really take issue with you calling an approximation a ‘lie’. And honestly, who’s multiplying decimal points mentally? That’s difficult. Use a calculator. Want to avoid calculators for an exam? Simplify! That’s why they use 5 and not 3.14.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What I mean is, if you’re using 3, you’re approximating, heavily. If you do anything critical using that value, it’s as bad as using 5 really, imo.

  Personally, I would say that pi should be presented as 3.14 and calculators should be used, there’s no reason to fear less than elegant numbers xD. And no, that’s not close enough for most engineering work, as an engineer we don’t usually approximate that much despite the memes, since you have to reduce the margin of error as much as practical. You generally don’t even approximate, just leave it as pi the symbol for the most part since in the end you won’t calculate it manually. The errors stack up the more you use the value. Eg, multiply an inaccurate value of pi by pi and the error you get is exponential.

  That aside, I think 5 is more elegant than 3 so if youre approximating to avoid the cumbersome numbers why not go for elegance instead of accuracy? xD

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course. They already use it like it’s some kind of hack. Make it official. Teach them the ins and outs of Wolfram. Better than memorising and regurgitating information, no?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So? You think you’ll get the correct result by using 3? Or 3.14? Not quite. You can only get infinitesimally close to the correct result by increasing digits of pi.

  And of course, if you really need that circumference for something critical, guess what? You use the things people developed for this very problem, software packages, and so on. And of course, you get it double checked, triple checked.

  If it’s assume pi is 5, it’s not misinformation. If they point guns at kids and say it’s 5 for real, then yes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PI is what⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s to make the numbers simple because they aren’t important, the methodology is