Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A Math Question That's Not About Math

This is for anybody who knows just a little about math: As you take Pi out to an infinite number of digits, does the probability approach 1 that each numeral is equally represented? That is, are there as many 5s as there are, say, 9s?

I'd say if you could figure that one out, you'd know a lot about life and the nature of things. You'd know if the universe was about order or chaos, for one. Equality or inequality. If God, while he doesn't roll dice, does play favorites. Whatever.

I have no answer to this. But I do have a fine new shirt.

6 comments:

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  3. Short answer: Yes. It's true whether you represent π as a base ten decimal, or in any other base (e.g., in binary π = 11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101…).

    Sadly, I know precious little about life and the nature of things.

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  4. As I understand it, God does not roll dice, because He got tired of getting a Yahtzee every single time.

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  5. Oddly, He still just can't win at the childhood board game "Sorry."

    (No idea if this is supposed to be some sort of pointed religious satire.)

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  6. Would it interest you to know that in the first trillion decimal digits of π to the right of the decimal point, "8" appears most often (100,000,791,469 times), and "0" appears least (99,999,485,134 times)?

    No? I didn’t think so.

    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiDigits.html

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