From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jan 07 2002 - 10:28:59 MST
Casey suggested:
To answer Michele's question:
There is little value memorizing Pi to 32 places.
But, it is fun to say that you did and can recite it-but,
I stress, you only do this your mathematician friends.
Others may find you strange and leave soon after. =)
Hermit comments:
Michele's question is very pertinent, but I don't think your answer is
correct.
Any mathematician would find it even more strange than the general populace
as mathematicians tend to think far more symbolically than the average. I am
not really certain which group would be impressed by this. For example,
engineers understand the use of precision, so they would not be much
impressed either and most physicists probably think that 4 is a good
approcimation to PI. Perhaps it might impress accountants and priests, both
of whom tend to be awed by numbers?
Regards
Hermit
The physicist says: "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... 9... well,
experimental error. 11 is prime... ..."
The mathematician says: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime... therefore, by
induction on 2n-1, all odd numbers are prime."
The engineer says: "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... 9 is
prime...11 is prime... ..."
The chemist says: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime; well, I guess that's
enough data!"
The BA says: "What's a prime?"
The programmer says: "Wait a minute, I think I have an algorithm from Knuth
on finding prime numbers... just a little bit longer, I've found the last
bug... no, that's not it... ya know, I think there may be a compiler bug
here - oh, did you want IEEE-998.0334 rounding or not? - was that in the
spec? - hold on, I've almost got it - I was up all night working on this
program, ya know... now if management would just get me that new workstation
tha just came out, I'd be done by now... etc., etc. ..."
The computer scientist says: "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... 7 is
prime... 7 is prime... 7 is prime... ..."
The psychologist says: "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... 9 is
latently prime but repressing it... 11 is prime... ..."
The social scientist says: "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... we'll
pretend 9 is prime... 11 is prime... ..."
The statistician says : "3 is prime... 5 is prime... 7 is prime... from
samples surveyed, all odd numbers are prime..."
The politician says : "Some numbers are prime.. but the goal is to create a
kinder, gentler country where all numbers are prime... "
Dubya Bush : "Gotta be prime. Not divisible, that kinda thing... but my
opponent wants to be even and still be prime. Can't do that. Or even the odd
thing. Some odds are prime, that's the way it is. Saddam wanted to be
prime... experience with primes, that and character. We have more primes now
than four years ago..."
Bill Gates : "D'ya know how many primes there are in four trillion dollars ?
Let's just count 'em. Now I run a business where we have a lot of numbers. I
know how to count..."
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