Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first 1000 Digits of Pi

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by anonymouz on Thursday September 13, 2012 @02:47PM (#4517870)

One could sort of satisfy naturalethic's wish by choosing a numeral system with pi as basis. Then pi would have digit representation '1' in this system. And yes, mathematicians have studied transcendental bases for numeral systems (Knuth in particular, see the short paragraph on http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Base.html which explicitly mentions pi as basis).

Of course it's not a good idea to base your day-to-day numeral system on pi, but I know that at least for irrational bases there are actual applications.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by mej10 on Thursday September 13, 2012 @03:01PM (#4517953)

This is a good point as well, and more in line with what the original commenter was asking.

Using pi as a base is even briefly discussed on wikipedia. I had some interest in using e as the basis for a while, since (as is pointed out on wiki) "The base e is the most economical choice of radix β > 1 (Hayes 2001), where the radix economy is measured as the product of the radix and the length of the string of symbols needed to express a given range of values."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-integer_representation#Exam...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by jerf on Thursday September 13, 2012 @03:48PM (#4518183)

"One could sort of satisfy naturalethic's wish by choosing a numeral system with pi as basis. Then pi would have digit representation '1' in this system."

I'm pretty sure pi comes out to 10 base pi, not 1 base pi.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by blacksmythe on Thursday September 13, 2012 @11:32PM (#4519916)

Numeral systems are not restricted to the set (base N).

"a numeral system with pi as basis" could be (base pi)pi, where pi =-> '1' and pipi -> '10' and unity -> '0.1'.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by jerf on Friday September 14, 2012 @10:20PM (#4525007)

I'd refer you back to philh's answer. You can do that and it isn't "wrong", but it is surprisingly uninteresting, as compared to a discussion of irrational or negative or imaginary bases.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pi in the Sky, Artists Fill the SF Bay Area With w/ first... by anonymouz on Thursday September 13, 2012 @04:24PM (#4518395)

Ah, right, of course! Still, I think this is the closest possible to the wish the OP had.

[ Parent | on HN ]