
Pi and the collapse of peer review - oherrala
http://mathscholar.org/pi-and-the-collapse-of-peer-review
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joe_the_user
Well, The thing about "the collapse of peer review" (or the rise of predatory
journals) is that it involves something like the collapse of the "scientific
community". For a device like peer review to work, you need to have a pool of
individuals who are trustworthy - who care more about the truth more than they
care about one or another sources of immediate benefit.

The institution of tenure is intended to facilitate this - the ideal is a
professor receives tenure and then can pursue their ideals rather than
constantly looking over their shoulder wondering if they are going to survive.

Of course, tenure is subject to abuse and tenure isn't the only way to get a
pool of people who are significantly interested in "what is true" rather than
"will this benefit me". But elimination of tenure and the reworking of the
university on a "neo-liberal" basis of pay-for-immediate-performance does
seems to be gradually destroying the community part of the scientific
community (if a given authority just wants money, why shouldn't any of their
peer reviews be up for the highest bid or why should they endorse predatory
journal or etc). That's not as much of a problem with technical fields where
it's known that truth can be nearly mechanically verified (math is approaching
that level but sociology seems unlikely to get there soon, for example).

We may get to a point where our society has immense technical know-how but has
abandoned science as such. Goes along with "post-truth" I suppose.

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dvfjsdhgfv
I'm sorry, I didn't follow that development - what is the relationship between
the abolishment of tenure and neo-liberalism?

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currymj
i think a shift from tenured chairs to lots of low-paid, precarious adjuncts
can be identified with a broader rise of neoliberal, corporate attitudes in
the university. that and evaluating professors solely based on how much money
they bring in, or on supposedly objective citation metrics. bringing "market
forces" where they hadn't been previously.

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mixedmath
I think it should be called "Pi and the rise of pay-for publication" or
perhaps "Predatory journals and miscomputing pi". If a predatory 'journal' is
more interested in taking submissions' money than presenting science, then the
thought of peer review doesn't enter into the picture.

The journals that are mentioned are present on Beal's list of predatory
journals [1], and so are even widely acknowledged to be crap journals.

[1]: [http://beallslist.weebly.com/](http://beallslist.weebly.com/)

~~~
Flott
Thank you for the list. It is way longer then I expected. It's also
interesting to take a look at the criteria used for the creation of the list.

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tshadley
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing)

It looks like the best place to verify reputable open access journals is
through the Directory of Open Access Journals:
[https://doaj.org/oainfo](https://doaj.org/oainfo). I don't see any of the
journals mentioned in the article listed.

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sgt101
It used to be "if you have to pay, then it's not worth publishing in it", but
plos requires $1500 so that rules out of the window.

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photon-torpedo
My favorite wrong value for pi is 355/113, as it is surprisingly accurate for
its simplicity.

~~~
montecarl
It requires remembering 6 digits and it is just a little bit more accurate
than directly remembering 6 digits of pi.

Here is a long article on other pi approximations:
[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiApproximations.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiApproximations.html)
It turns out that 355/113 does a great job compared to most of the expressions
given there! But none seem to be better than just remembering 3.14159.

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radarsat1
We should be taught in high school to remember 314-159, it's actually easier
to remember than 3-point-14159.

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posterboy
it's the same row of numerals, where's the difference?

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radarsat1
Do you prefer to remember your phone number as 378-2739, or as 3-782739?

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posterboy
Break that down for me, do you prefer to remember 0003 or just 3? 1 in 7-adic
or 7 in dekadic? I count 1, 2, many; so don't ask me; also I asked first.

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jaclaz
As a side note:

> and by the third century Chinese mathematician Liu Hui and the fifth century
> Indian mathematician Aryabhata, both of whom found pi to at least four digit
> accuracy.

Zu Chongzhi should also be mentioned:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_Chongzhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_Chongzhi)

The simple fraction 355/113, or Milü:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milü](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milü)

which is very easy to rememember (the first three odd numbers repeated twice)
and gives in its simplicity an excellent approximation.

On Windows Calc:

355/113-pi=2,6676418906242231236893288649633e-7

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jwilk
The article links to 11 papers, but they have only two authors: one claming π
= 17 – 8√3, and another one claming π = (14 – √2)/4.

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coldcode
Reading his little paper, I was amazed at how many formula there are for
calculating pi. Math is fun.

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Recursing
You can find many more on Wikipedia

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_formulae_involving_%CF...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_formulae_involving_%CF%80#Formulae_yielding_.CF.80)

