Thinking without language?

[Lee Sau Dan ~{ at nJX6X~}]

>>>>> "Vidar" == Vidar Hokstad <vidarh at screenmedia.no> writes:


    Vidar> Not to mention that you will likely *never* deal with any
    Vidar> objects that are large enough that you'll actually *need*
    Vidar> pi to that many decimal places. It's more of a mental
    Vidar> excercise to see if you can do it. Even dealing with
    Vidar> astronomic distances you're rather unlikely to need
    Vidar> anything more than 10-15 decimals.

That's not about physical sizes, but the accuracy needed. 3.14 is only
0.05%  smaller than  3.1415926535897932384626433.  That  inaccuracy is
negligible in  most applications.  For more precision,  3.1416 is only
0.0002% larger.  355/113 is off by 0.000008%.

Yes, memorizing  pi to so many  digits is just a  mental exercise, not
for practical use.



-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     $(0,X)wAV(B(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 
.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee                      e-mail: sdlee at csis.hku.hk |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'