Timeline for Does $\pi$ contain all possible number combinations?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 26, 2024 at 23:36 | comment | added | Jim Balter | @LarsH Eh? It's obviously true. "Does that reduce the "all the great questions of the universe" to some inferior subset?" -- Um, no. | |
| Jul 26, 2024 at 23:30 | comment | added | Jim Balter | This is silly nonsense. That any question A with possible answer A′ can be rephrased as a yes/no question is irrelevant because to so you need to already know the answer A'. Of course the assertion that pi contains the answer to every question is "empty" (or rather, useless), but not for this reason. | |
| Jun 12, 2020 at 10:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot | Commonmark migration | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 21:11 | comment | added | LarsH | @whuber: gotcha. | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 20:43 | comment | added | whuber | @Lars I was just riffing off Feynman, not quoting him. What he actually said is that there likely is a single equation describing all the laws of physics. As I recall, just collect all the basic equations of physical law (presumably finite in number), express them each in the form $u_i=0$, and then write $\sum_i |u_i|^2 = 0$. This trivial re-expression of things that look complicated into something superficially looking much simpler was my motivation for arguing all the great questions of life can be made into yes-no questions. | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 20:17 | comment | added | LarsH | @whuber: I agree it's a philosophical question, though I don't think my question "starts" us going there... I'm just asking whether Feynman's claim (as described by you) is true. So if my question is philosophical, Feynman's statement is too. :-) Too often physicists and mathematicians (Sagan and Hawking are egregious examples) make dazzling statements with strong philosophical components, without doing the requisite philosophical homework. They end up making a mess, then often try to fix the mess by deciding that any reality that doesn't fit their paradigm isn't worth considering. | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 15:40 | comment | added | QED | Yes I just meant to ask where the string "pi" appears, or "π" in Unicode (whatever), as a muse. Thanks! | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 13:46 | comment | added | whuber | @psoft I do not understand your question. One possible interpretation is that you are asking where the string "pi" occurs. The first occurrence, up to case, is at position 566, where "PI" is seen. In general, if $\pi$ is indeed locally normal, then we would expect to see any $k$-digit string (up to case) appear approximately within the first $128^k / 2^k$ = $2^{6k}$ positions. For $k=2$ that's $2^{12}$=$4096$ and for $k=3$ that's $2^{18}\approx 250000$. These estimates are consistent with what we have seen for "no", "pi", and "yes". Finding a given 5+ character string may be difficult! | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 13:40 | comment | added | whuber | @LarsH That's a good question--but it starts to push us more into philosophy than mathematics. This re-expression of every great question as a yes-no question requires that you accept that every such question does have a definite answer and that you also accept the Law of the Excluded Middle. | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 9:56 | comment | added | LarsH | Is it true 'that any question A with possible answer A′ (correct or not) can be re-expressed in the form "Is A′ a correct answer to A?"' Does that reduce the "all the great questions of the universe" to some inferior subset? I don't know, just asking. | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 2:53 | comment | added | QED | Please advise: where does 'pi' or 'π' occur? | |
| Oct 18, 2012 at 19:52 | history | answered | whuber | CC BY-SA 3.0 |