

The Pi You Know Is A Lie - eyudkowsky
http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf

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axod
Is scribd an improvement for windows users or something? It seems that for
most people here it's an anoyance and a worse user experience than just
linking to the pdf. Does it solve some problem I'm missing?

edit: Try zooming all the way in. You're in for some hideously unreadable
fuzzy font rendering... why oh why.

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eru
It does not seem to improve matters on my Ubuntu, either.

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mhartl
I independently 'discovered' this a few years back, basically on the grounds
that there are infinitely many shapes with constant diameter but only one (the
circle) with constant radius. It stands to reason that the ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter contains a spurious factor of 2; it must be that
the ratio of circumference to _radius_ is the more fundamental quantity.

This discovery was almost enough to make me want to memorize an embarrassing
number of digits of 2π; 6.28 is really pathetic. (What's embarrassing, you
say? Try 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399...)

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llimllib
How are you defining diameter? <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Diameter.html>
only defines it for circular and spherical objects.

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mhartl
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve_of_constant_width>

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pc
PDF: <http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf>

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eyudkowsky
That's what I entered, but it came out on Scribd!

~~~
0x44
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=179721>

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Alex3917
I dislike the current system because it attributes a violation of copyright to
the submitter that they're not actually responsible for. In practice it's not
a real issue, it's just kind of tacky.

It would be better if all submitted PDFs were turned into Scribd documents,
but each user had a profile option for whether to change their PDF links to
point to the Scribd doc or to leave it pointing to the original download.

~~~
jsn
or they might just add a hyperlinked "[pdf]" or "[scribd]" _after_ the
original link, pointing to scribdified version.

internets ignoring my choice of pdf viewer -- that sure feels wrong.

oh well, greasemonkey to rescue.

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Xichekolas
Already done: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039>

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jsn
my version (<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/26925>) was there 1 minute
before that :)

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Xichekolas
Yeah, I just tacked it on to my blacklist, which I'm sure not everyone wants.

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gills
That's interesting.

I'm not trying to hijack the thread here, but the non-standard scrolling in
Scribd bugs me. When I use two-finger drag on the macbook pro to scroll,
scribd just doesn't move like a normal page.

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dnaquin
Yes! Bothered me as well.

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aston
Yeah man. I love this paper. All of the equations look so much prettier
without 2 in front of pi everywhere.

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dnaquin
Volume of the n-ball?

Generally, what I would consider the defining equation for pi. Has no factor
of 2?

V_n = pi^(n/2) _R^n / Gamma(n/2+1) = C_n_ R^n

C_n = pi^k/k! for even n=2k

C_n = 2^(k+1) _k!_ pi^k / (2k+1)! for odd n=2k+1

Of course we could just change the definition of gamma, but I prefer gamma as
an extension of factorial.

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tlrobinson
Indiana once tried to pass a law saying pi actually equals 3.2

<http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html>

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mwerty
Almost as bad as negatively charged electrons.

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aneesh
I don't see why this is such a big deal. Scaling by a factor of 2 doesn't make
any of the math lose it's beauty. The underlying math is still the same.
Calling 30 minutes "an hour" doesn't make time go faster. It's all semantics,
really.

Anyway, pi is so engrained in our mathematics that the costs of switching
would surely be higher than any superficial, aesthetic benefits.

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akd
The author knows this, and was making a merely aesthetic point which you seem
to have sucked all the fun out of.

~~~
dhbradshaw
I think the aesthetics are important. You can see further when they are
better.

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whacked_new
Holy... Eliezer Yudkowsky? Why, hello...!

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technoguyrob
Wowsers, that's a good point. I didn't know he's on YC, that's great.

~~~
eyudkowsky
Aw, shucks.

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xirium
From the article: The proper value, which does deserve all of the reverence
and adulation bestowed upon the current imposter, is the number now
unfortunately known as 2pi.

Does this mean we can have 2pi day on Jun 28?

