Happy Pi Day! Time for the Annual Pi Quiz!

[Dr. Strange]

Highlight after the statement to find out if it's true or false.


Pi is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet. [font color = white]True; it is also the 16th letter of the Geek alphabet.[/font]

If you were to type one billion decimals of pi, they would stretch from New York City to the middle of Kansas. [font color = white]True.[/font]

The zip code in Savannah Georgia is 31415. [font color = white]True.[/font]

The first zero in the decimal expansion of pi does not occur until the 99th digit. [font color = white]False: it occurs in the 32nd place after the decimal.[/font]

In Ancient Greece, the symbol for pi denoted the number 80. [font color = white]True.[/font]

At the 763rd digit, there is a string of six nines in a row. [font color = white]True; this is known as the Feynman Point.[/font].

The first 100 digits of pi were first calculated in 1823. [font color = white]False: they were first calculated by 1701.[/font]

If Pi is written in base 20, then the digits form a repeating pattern 1139 digits long. [font color = white]False: if they did, then pi would be a rational number; pi is irrational.[/font]

After saying (correctly) that pi / 2 is the value of x between 1 and 2 for which cos x vanishes, Edmund Landau was dismissed from his position in 1934 for teaching in an 'un-German' style. [font color = white]True.[/font]

Pi is not a root of any nonzero polynomial with real coefficients. [font color = white]False: it is a root of the polynomial x - pi. It is not a root of any nonzero polynomial with integer coefficients, which means that it is a transcendental number.[/font]

Now go search for your birthday in pi: http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

[Ron Obvious]

1. Cool!

I knew the base 20 one, and why.

The pi site found several birthdays between the 30 and 60 million digit range. Unfortunately, not my own:

The string ******** did not occur in the first 200000000 digits of pi after position 0.
(Sorry! Don't give up, Pi contains lots of other cool strings.)

That's with a 4 digit year. When using a 2 digit year, it found it after just a few hundred thousand digits.

I've always thought it mind-blowing that irrational numbers like PI, being infinite and non-repeating, must contain everything anybody has ever or will ever write or say, including this post.

[Dr. Strange]

6. Actually...

I've always thought it mind-blowing that irrational numbers like PI, being infinite and non-repeating, must contain everything anybody has ever or will ever write or say, including this post.

this isn't known for sure. If you mean that pi is "normal", that's currently unknown. Although the decimal expansion doesn't repeat, there's not much else known. The first 30,000,000 digits are uniformly distributed, meaning almost 1/10 of the digits are zeros, 1/10 are ones, 1/10 are twos, etc. But for all we know, after a certain point, it's possible that one of the digits no longer appears. What if it turned out that there were no fives after the quadrillionth digit? It would freak us the hell out. (Well, maybe.) But for all we know, that could happen. In fact, after a certain point, it may turn out that there are only two digits that appear, maybe a bunch of threes and sevens, alternating semi-randomly. Many minds would be blown.

[Ron Obvious]

11. You're right...

In fact, I remember Carl Sagan's novel Contact had something about a designer signature after so many digits of PI to let humanity know when it was advanced enough to calculate it.

[Myrina]

2. I didn't know any of the answers, but had to say your formatting is way groovy!!

Math phobe here.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

3. Mine is

"The string 11121963 occurs at position 37,959,121 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. The 3. is not counted. " I don't think I will bother checking their math! lol

[In_The_Wind]

4. 154,921,247

Savannah zip code: The string 31415 occurs at position 88,008 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. The 3. is not counted.




My birthday: occurs at position 154,921,247 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. The 3. is not counted.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

5. I am so envious of your ability to understand

all of this. My head spins just trying to wrap itself around transcendental numbers!

But my birthday occurs at the 15,915,025 th digit. Thanks!

[Wounded Bear]

7. If you were to type one billion decimals of pi, they would stretch from New York City........

to the middle of Kansas.

What font and type size?

[Dr. Strange]

8. Comic sans, 12-pt.

Because that's what mathematicians use.

No wait, that's only clown mathematicians.

[Wounded Bear]

9. Luckily, I don't hate clowns....

even mathematician clowns.

[Callmecrazy]

10. Mine is at position 50,245,264

But I did the math.