• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    If pi is truly infinite, then it contains all the works of Shakespeare, every version of Windows, and this comment I’m typing right now.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      4 months ago

      That’s not how it’s works. Being “infinite” is not enough, the number 1.110100100010000… is “infinite”, without repeating patterns and dosen’t have other digits that 1 or 0.

      • HatchetHaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        to be fair, though, 1 and 0 are just binary representations of values, same as decimal and hexadecimal. within your example, we’d absolutely find the entire works of shakespeare encoded in ascii, unicode, and lcd pixel format with each letter arranged in 3x5 grids.

      • Fubber Nuckin'@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        If it’s infinite without repeating patterns then it just contain all patterns, no? Eh i guess that’s not how that works, is it? Half of all patterns is still infinity.

          • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            However, as the name implies, this is nothing special about pi. Almost all numbers have this property. If anything, it’s the integers that we should be finding weird, like you mean to tell me that every single digit after the decimal point is a zero? No matter how far you go, just zeroes forever?

        • Kogasa@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          Still not enough, or at least pi is not known to have this property. You need the number to be “normal” (or a slightly weaker property) which turns out to be hard to prove about most numbers.

            • barsquid@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              “Nearly all real numbers are normal (basically no real numbers are not normal), but we’re only aware of a few. This one literally non-computable one for sure. Maybe sqrt(2).”

              Gotta love it.

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                4 months ago

                We’re so used to dealing with real numbers it’s easy to forget they’re terrible. These puppies are a particularly egregious example I like to point to - functions that preserve addition but literally black out the entire x-y plane when plotted. On rational numbers all additive functions are automatically linear, of the form mx+n. There’s no nice in-between on the reals, either; it’s the “curve” from hell or a line.

                Hot take, but I really hope physics will turn out to work without them.

    • Naz@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      shaves the sphere down with a sculptor’s knife

      There. 3.1416. Not perfectly round but it’ll bake in the oven just fine.