In Stansilaw Lem's excellent little book "His
Master's Voice," a man, putting forward
bits derived from extraterrestrial transmissions as
random numbers, is surprised
to be informed that these numbers,
claimed to be random, in fact repeat themselves after
some large number of megabytes.
A Los Alamos-type effort is struck up to determine
what these bits mean, if anything.
In the end the scientific investigations prove
fruitless, although they are able to
sythesize some sort of odd slime out of information
out of the bits, if memory serves.
Now even if one hates science fiction, as I do,
this little story illustrates the right tone.
It might be that there's something in the digits of
pi. Who knows, really?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 11:01
PM
Subject: Re: [math-fun] 1.24 Trillion
digits of pi
----- Original Message -----
I am very, very fond of pi, but I don't think I've ever
been particularly excited about the calculation of huge numbers of its
digits. Suppose someone finally found some kind of pattern in the
digits -- would that be so very surprising? (OK, I admit that if the
pattern were a message from another inhabited planet, *that* would be
something to write home about!)
But I suspect I'm missing
something. Can someone try to explain to me what's the big deal about
more and more digits of pi, other than getting into Guinness?
In my
opinion finding a pattern in pi's digits would be
jaw-droppingly
revolutionary. But if the digits were a message from "god" or little
green aliens, that would be even more than revolutionary, that would be
impossible.
From a practical POV I think pi digits are used
to check out computers
but I would not have guessed it would be worth
5 years of design time.
Anyone: Why did they do this?
Steve Gray