Quote:
Originally Posted by Insanity01
"What is Pi?"
A mathematician: "Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter."
A computer programmer: "Pi is 3.141592653589 in double precision."
A physicist: "Pi is 3.14159 plus or minus 0.000005."
An engineer: "Pi is about 22/7."
Just depends on how smart you are, and how you wish to apply Pi.
|
The engineer realizes that he lives in the real (physical) world, where there are limits to how accurately one can measure something. In linear measurements, rarely can you make it past 4 places; so using a "more accurate" value of pi than 3.142 is completely pointless. Stay in school until you learn what "significant figures" really mean.
The others can impress themselves (and their dates, as if) with how many useless digits they can memorize.