{"id":8565,"date":"2017-03-14T17:31:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T22:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=8565"},"modified":"2017-03-14T17:31:09","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T22:31:09","slug":"its-pi-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/03\/14\/its-pi-day\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Pi Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because tau<\/em> day<\/a> isn’t half as cute. I would have let it pass in silence, but Dr. Ogden’s1<\/sup> post concerning Buffon’s Needle<\/strong><\/em> approach<\/a> to calculating pi<\/em> is just too damn cute.<\/p>\n

In 1777, a French philosopher called Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, wrote out a very elegant theorem which turned out to be the earliest problem in geometric probability.<\/p>\n

Buffon discovered that if you draw a set of equally-spaced parallel lines (say, d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> centimetres apart) and drop sticks on them which are shorter than the spacing (say l<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> centimetres long, where l<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> is less than d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>), then the probability of a stick crossing a line is<\/p>\n

2<\/span>l\/<\/span><\/span>\u03c0<\/span>d<\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

This means that if you drop lots of sticks randomly and count how many cross the parallel lines, you can calculate what \u03c0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>is by rearranging the formula:<\/p>\n

\u03c0<\/span>=<\/span>2<\/span>l<\/span>s<\/span><\/span>\/c<\/span>d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

where s<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> is the number of sticks you drop and c<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> is the number that crossed a line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go see Dr. Ogden’s post if you want the footnotes or more commentary. Or learn about the mathematician who gave it a go by spinning in circles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Deb’s Raised Game Pie<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

BTW, the second to last pie I baked was supposed to be lemon meringue, but turned into caramel meringue. We discovered squirrels and other local wildlife would actually eat it.<\/p>\n

The last pie I baked was an emergency replacement apple pie<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

1<\/sup>Via SciFri<\/strong><\/em> via S<\/strong>paceweather<\/em>.com<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because tau day isn’t half as cute. I would have let it pass in silence, but Dr. Ogden’s1 post concerning Buffon’s Needle approach to calculating pi is just too damn cute. In 1777, a French philosopher called Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, wrote out a very elegant theorem which turned \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8568,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8565\/revisions\/8568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}