I remember discovering that pi x 10^7 is very close to the number of seconds in a year while at uni.
One of my tutors was convinced this had to be more than coincidence, but I always figured it was just chance and a nice but sometimes useful shortcut...
My first thought was "well of course it is, since pi is a little larger than 3" but it was cool to see an actual derivation of how much pi squared differs from 10 as a nice, closed form series.
The second fact, pi^2 ~= g, is famous enough that it has a separate section in Wikipedia [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_coincidence#Gravi...
And https://xkcd.com/1047/
Also https://xkcd.com/217/
I remember discovering that pi x 10^7 is very close to the number of seconds in a year while at uni.
One of my tutors was convinced this had to be more than coincidence, but I always figured it was just chance and a nice but sometimes useful shortcut...
My first thought was "well of course it is, since pi is a little larger than 3" but it was cool to see an actual derivation of how much pi squared differs from 10 as a nice, closed form series.
The author wants tau=2*pi, but in the Greek alphabet, tau has one vertical stroke, and pi has two.
So, visually in Greek, pi=2*tau would seem an improvement.
Oh, well.
Tau is tau over 1, pi is tau over 2. See also https://www.tauday.com/tau-manifesto#sec-conflict_and_resist...
pi's prevalence instead of tau is one of the strongest indicators that we live in a suboptimal timeline.