Happy Pi Day! + 3.14 Steem contest

in #steemstem6 years ago

Introduction

March 14. What does this date mean to every tech geek in the world? Well, you guessed, today we are celebrating probably the most iconic and popular number - Pi. But why this particular day? March 14 in the month/day format is 3/14, the same as the first three digits of Pi.

Pi visualization

In order to honor this number properly, I decided to uncover its hidden beauty. Firstly, I have chosen a circle as a base of my visualization, as Pi is significantly associated with this geometric shape. I divided this circle into ten fractions, each of them representing one digit.

After that, I wrote a computer program that takes the first digit of Pi and draws a line to the second. Then, it draws a line from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth etc. That's the result (I took the liberty of adding some fancy colors):

vis.png

A little contest

Make a guess how many digits of Pi are visualized in the image above. A person with the most accurate guess will get 3.14 Steem! Your comment must be submitted before this post pays out. After that, I will select a winner and transfer Steem. Results will be posted in the comment under this post. Upvote and resteem are not obligatory, but highly appreciated!

Pi approximation

Humanity had many attempts to approximate Pi as precisely as possible. One of them was a fraction 22/7, which in decimal representation equals to 3.14285714. Compared to the today's Pi (3.14159265) this result is really admirable.

Apropos today celebration, I would like to try to find another approximation using Monte Carlo method. Firstly, I created a square with an inscribed circle.

circle.png

In this situation:
CodeCogsEqn (7).gif
CodeCogsEqn (8).gif
CodeCogsEqn (9).gif

If we could calculate the ratio between the area of circle and the area of square, we would be able to approximate Pi using this simple equation. One method to find this ratio is generating a big number of randomly located points and checking if they are within the area of circle or not.

points.png

Once we know the number of points:

CodeCogsEqn (10).gif

The best approximation I managed to get using this method:

3.14159292 - my approximation
3.14159265 - real Pi

As you can see this result is pretty satisfying, as the difference begins on the seventh decimal place.

Thank you for reading and wish you good luck in the contest!

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So much math makes my head spin. I like to image and will guess 31...

Posted using Partiko Android

Man! Are you a scientist? That was awesome math! Using the dots to find Pi was genius (at least for me)! By the way, in my native language (Spanish) Pi sound like Pee (Hehehe).

And, you know Pi has all phone numbers in the world inside of it? And Some people think all the words in the world... And all of that enclosed in a simple circle... Amazing, isn't it?

I guess you use more than a thousand digits of Pi, my guess is about 4500 digits.

Nice post!

Hi @jadams2k18

I met @neavvy in person just few days ago and I confirm, that he is to young to be scientist :) He is not even 18 years old yet. Can you imagine? :)

Cheers, Piotr

My dear friend! Hope you're fine.

Amazing news! @neavvy must be those indigo people from another planet who uses more than 20% of their brain (You know, most human, like me, barely use a 9% of the brain, hehehe)

Thank you guys @crypto.piotr and @jadams2k18, but I doubt if I am outstanding in any way :) I know both of you have really amazing skills in areas where I am completely average :)

We all have some serious skills, we just need to slowly learn to work together and find a way to get rich :)

find a way to get rich :)

I like that :)

Thank you for your entry @jadams2k18!

Are you a scientist? That was awesome math! Using the dots to find Pi was genius (at least for me)!

Well, actually using dots was not my idea, as it is a common mathematic method developed by Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam. Unfortunately I am not a scientist, but I am extremely interested in math and all technological stuff :)

in my native language (Spanish) Pi sound like Pee

Haha :D

And, you know Pi has all phone numbers in the world inside of it? And Some people think all the words in the world... And all of that enclosed in a simple circle... Amazing, isn't it?

Yes, Pi is really mysterious and fascinating number...

You see! You are a clever guy!

This is an announcement!

The participants of the contest are:
@mytechtrail
@jadams2k18
@bluerobo
@ilazramusic
@rufusfirefly

And the winner is: @jadams2k18 with an absolutely brilliant prediction: 4500 digits.

The actual number of digits: 4472. So the difference between his prediction and the actual number was 28. I am absolutely amazed.

I will transfer 3.14 Steem in a moment :)


Source: Giphy.com

YAAAAAY!!!! Moneeey!!! Come to papa!

Thank for the reward my fellow @neavvy!

I'm glad you enjoyed your prize @jadams2k18 :D

I'm saying 1000.

Posted using Partiko Android

Thank you for your entry @bluerobo!

Hello!

This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!

Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!



Thank you for curation @helpiecake. I really appreciate that :)

I'm gonna say that, in the image there are 36 digits, let see what happens!

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