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? Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Gray To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 11:01 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] 1.24 Trillion digits of pi ----- Original Message ----- From: asimovd@aol.com 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