Mathematics Links
Easy As Pi
From The
Scientist, 18 March 1996.
The fraction 22 over 7-represented by p-is a mathematics
staple, denoting the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter. While every first-year geometry student knows
its approximate value to be 3.14, Alexander Volokh thinks he's
devised a method to remember the value of pi out to 167
places after the decimal point. The Los Angeles-based writer and
amateur mathematician has developed a
stream-of-consciousness mnemonic device that would do James Joyce proud.
The
key is a rambling paragraph in which the number of
letters in each word corresponds to an appropriate digit in the equation
of
pi. Thus, "How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after
the tough lectures involving quantum mechanics" equals
3.14159265358979-"how" has three letters, "I" has one,
"need" has four, and so on. Volokh, working with pharmacology
student David Tazartes of Johns Hopkins University and
Seattle writer Steven LaCombe, extended that rather familiar device
by more than 100 new words, using the end of each
sentence to represent a 0. The son of a mathematician and the brother of
a math major, Volokh says his efforts grew out of the
math-related "puzzles and games" he grew up with. "We had a lot of
the mathematical traditions in the family. One of the
things about the math traditions is one learns all these neat ways of
learning pi." And the reaction so far? "'Gee, that's
really weird,'" Volokh replies. "Obviously no one needs to remember 167
digits of pi. Most people don't quite see the utility of it, but that's
okay." While Volokh, who needed "maybe an evening" to develop the expanded
version, concedes that 3.14 usually suffices as the value of pi, he says
that the relative uselessness of his device does not render it totally
without
merit. "To say that math has to be useful is like saying that the English
language is only good for ordering pizza," he notes. How many letters in
pepperoni?
3.
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