Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Your Life in Pi

Pi. Sometimes approximated as 3.14 or 22/7, it is an irrational number that has no exact fractional representation and whose decimal representation goes on into infinity.

It's an incredible number.

Check it out. Since it's an infinite, non-repeating number, every conceivable sequence of numbers will be represented at some point on the endless line of digits of pi. Your phone number is somewhere in there. Your birthday is in there. Your paternal grandfather's birthday followed by his first phone number followed by the date he was married is in there.

But it gets better. When the digits of pi are converted into binary (the 0's and 1's that compose the digital script for the pictures that we see on television sets), every conceivable picture will show up at some point along the line of pi. There will be a picture of you when you were born. There will be an exact replica of the Mona Lisa. A picture of you and your significant other engaged in your first awkward kiss. Every movie ever made, every book ever written, every unplanned Tourette's outburst: all represented within pi.

This blog post.

Basically, all of the information ever created within the universe is stored within the digits of pi. It's really breathtaking when you take time to consider the implications of this fabulous number.

No comments:

Post a Comment