This article says that NASA uses 15 digits after the decimal point, which I’m counting as 16 in total, since that’s how we count significant digits in scientific notation. If you round pi to 3, that’s one significant digit, and if you round it to 1, that’s zero digits.
I know that 22/7 is an extremely good approximation for pi, since it’s written with 3 digits, but is accurate to almost 4 digits. Another good one is √10, which is accurate to a little over 2 digits.
I’ve heard that ‘field engineers’ used to use these approximations to save time when doing math by hand. But what field, exactly? Can anyone give examples of fields that use fewer than 16 digits? In the spirit of something like xkcd: Purity, could you rank different sciences by how many digits of pi they require?
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I’m a waitress, and pie is $12.50.
As a mathematician, I don’t use any digits, but the symbol π.
As a computer scientist, same, but it’s called
PI.It’s the computer that does the thing with the digits, not me. 🙃
In which case you’re probably using a predefined 64-bit floating point number, which I think is accurate to 15 digits.
I’d like to agree, but writing π with capital letters is heresy.
Yeah, math conventions and programming conventions don’t always align. As in, basically never…
I’m a liar and I use all the digits of pi.
Ya know, this thread has inspired me. I’m a sound engineer, and find myself yelling “check one two three four” in the michrophone to test it all the time. I’m gonna start reciting the digits of Pi instead, and then as I learn them, I’ll progressively advance how many numbers of Pi that I use in my everyday job :D
I work at a library, though. I should probably just go with poetry or Douglas Adams or something, but this makes me sound much more impressive