H.I. No. 7: Sorry, Language Teachers: Difference between revisions

{{collapse top|title=Summary}}

{{Empty section|date=September 2017}}

And her video for Pi Day today. Like, like all her videos was excellent. I mean, essentially, in a nutshell. I mean, I hope people will watch it if they haven't already seen it. And I'm sure Grey'll pop it in the show notes. Yeah, of course. But in a nutshell, she was saying that Pi is no big deal. It's a very it's a very ordinary. It's an ordinary number like every single other number on the number line. And I guess some of the points she made were really good and educational about you know, there are an infinite number of numbers with repeating digits and things like that. But the tone of the video was Pi's no big deal. What's the big deal with Pi Day, Pi's a nothing number. And she sort of, you know, was attacking or chipping away at a lot of the things people love about Pi. And fair enough and I and like I said I enjoyed it very much. But I do think that Pi is allowed to be special and exceptional. And whether or not we celebrate Pi day, you know, that's just a silly thing, isn't it? But I think it is okay to celebrate Pi and to love Pi. And I love Pi. Now, I want to I've been thinking about why that is. And some of this may be comes back to what you were talking about with kind of this random reinforcement. But I think maybe the, the ordinariness and the complete and utter arbitrariness of Pi is why we love it. That That a number that seems so just weirdly out of nowhere, just like a distant, strange number that has nothing special about it to look at it could become such a celebrity and it could become so imbued with meaning to us as humans, is what we like about it, like almost, it's almost like a product of its own sort of celebrity. It's a bit like, it's like the number that won the lottery, it won the lottery, like, because of because we chose to put some significance into the ratio of circles diameter to circumference, because I can and I can see why we did that because the circle is a it is a pretty special shape, but it is just another shape. But because that particular ratio we decided to celebrate. So then we had to go and find the poor old number on the number line that happened to represent that ratio. And this one number was just plucked from obscurity and we put on a pedestal and said, Good on you, number you, you know, you have some significance to us because you somehow relate to the wheel. I think that is like I think that appeals to us as humans like the way we are appeal to the lucky person who lands the half court shot at the basketball game or the person who has the hundred million dollar winning lottery ticket. I mean, there's nothing special about that person. They just were in the right place at the right time. They were plucked from obscurity amongst all the other humans. And I think that like gives us like some kind of I think it appeals to us. I know I know robot like you not going to understand that.

Find your anthropomorphize agent of Pi, just ludicrous.

Really, I think. I think it's a very human thing to do. Like, you know, like, like, like, like, like how some people have a soft spot for Saturn because it's got rings or, you know, we we look for

That is different I just think you description of, of I Oh, there's others there's all these poor numbers milling around and like we as a society have taken this one number and and raised him up to celebrity status and he was the he was the lucky guy in the right place at the right time. I don't know I find that that whole description very hard to relate to and very particular

I want to know what do you think do you think do you subscribe to you know, what's the big deal with pie it's it's you know it's a number of you know,

you okay you met you? Well first of all I just to mention about VI's video. If you haven't watched it go watch it now and then come back The link is in the show notes because there will be mild spoilers for the video. Okay. But the thing that thing that I liked about the video was basically via was going through all of the things that are normally said about the uniqueness of pie and pointing out how they are not unique and she was Doing it with very typical via humor. Like I, she really got me to laugh out loud a couple times in the video. Yeah. You know when she was really good. Yeah, like when she when she pointed out that you know people talk about how it has an infinite number of digits in it. Well five has an infinite number of digits, it just so happens to be that all those digits are zero, right? But so the infiniteness of these numbers is not special. And something that I hadn't ever really thought about. But talking about irrational numbers that there's an infinite number of irrational numbers. It's not like there's just a couple of special ones and pie and he happened to be those special numbers, which is something I never really thought about in that exact way, which is why I like five videos. She's always pointing out these things. So she was just taking apart all of the the unique elements of pie and I think doing it, doing it in a very good way. I really liked it.

And I had a lot of I had a lot. It was thought provoking for that reason. Yeah, it was good. But I still think it's okay to to love pie and think it's special.

Okay, so now Before, before I tell you my opinions on this, I will first say that back in high school when I was doing Driver's Ed, and I was very, very bored. I actually spent a bunch of time memorizing the digits of Pi know because I was a nerdy person. Now I'm not I'm not like one of these, these Olympiads who memorizes 10s of thousands digits, but I had somewhere around the first 200 digits wise like that. Massive. Well, it's impressive. It sounds impressive, it is not as impressive as actually sounds, because I was using, you know, this memory techniques for this kinds of things where you can transform digits into words and then the words into sentences. And so it's not as hard as it as it actually sounds to memorize an arbitrary sequence of digits. You know, this is this is basically a technique that I learned for school and to memorize stuff. And so then I was just, you know, just doing this as as a as a boredom kind of thing, and I thought it was was cool, right? Because I'm, I was a nerdy High School guy. And I never came across town. until some point when I was in college. I don't remember exactly when. But some math professor brought it up.

This is a two pi. This is twice pie. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a more obvious constant to us.

Yeah. So basically, I think the, to sum it up as pie is based on the diameter of the circle. And tau is based on the radius of the circle. And the argument is usually that in when we're talking about both most shapes, you talk about their most fundamental parts, and for a circle is most fundamental part of the radius, not the diameter. And so pi is a little weird that it's using this non fundamental part of the shape to to define it. So my opinion on the whole pie versus town debate is one of utility When I heard about how honest to God, so much of trigonometry really clicked in my mind, and I thought, Oh, I know this is just a conversion of a factor of two. But boy did it. Suddenly, trigonometry made a whole lot more sense in my mind with the pie as I was switching from pi to tau. And so that's why I have I have read things from other mathematicians saying that this is a way out of my league. But that tau is only really useful in this kind of high school college level math and that when you get beyond this level, you know, maybe there are there are arguments in favor of pie. I don't really know those arguments. But I would just say for the level of math that I was doing, Tao made things just instantly, so much simpler. And, you know, being able to understand like the sine function, you know, talking about every every kid who's High School is listening to me now, right? You have to do I know you have to memorize these things, you know, what is the sine of pi over two? What is the sine of pi over four and you need to have these things off the top of your head. And it just, I know, it seems like it's completely arbitrary. But if you if you use tau instead, it's always just a fraction of the the direction around a circle. So if someone asks you, you know, what's the sign of tau over for, you just have to think okay, well, I go a fourth of the way around the circle. And if you imagine that on a number line, it's very obviously one I hope I'm doing this right in my head. And and so, you know, or a towel over to you go halfway around the circle, you know, what's the height of zero so I am in favor of towel because it just to me made so much or trigonometry make immediate sense. Where the pie stuff I had always had a hard time with pine radians and never quite gotten it. So

there was some good there are some good videos on there are some good number five videos on it. You'd probably enjoy the film reality went about Because he, he's protel and talks about some of those things you were just talking about. But even if you use towel, it's still just, you know, it's still an arbitrary constant. Where do you stand on this idea of us? celebrating an arbitrary number and, you know, having these celebrity numbers?

Well, I think celebrity numbers, I know what you mean. So think it's a funny term. I mean, I would say I am, I am for it. You know, for example, I love the fact that there is a Pi Day, I'm not going to get all grumpy because I think Tao is a better number, and then we're having a PI day because there's like, this whole day allows this discussion to happen and you can talk about math and it brings math up as a topic so I'm very much in favor of that.

That goes

with it. I did not know that. So yeah, I'm in favor of celebrity numbers. I know I can't conceive of of a reason not to be and if you know if people really like pie, I think I think I think maybe part of the celebrity of pi is that it is an interesting looking number, right? Whereas towel looks too much like a tea and the imaginary number is an eye symbol. It's a cool symbol. Yeah, it's a very cool symbol. Or if people who've been following me on Twitter know that I have been re working my way through the wire, the TV series series for probably the fourth or fifth time now, man, that's a good show. Yeah, man, I could talk about that forever. And there is a character in the second season who has a PI tattoo on the back of his neck. And I was wondering if this is I assume that maybe it's the actors tattoo. I was I was always kind of curious about that. Cuz it's a detail that as the striking in the second season, and seems a little bit out of place. But yeah, the PI symbol is just cool. So I can see why it is it is more prominent as a feature or it looks cool on movie posters. You know, if you want to have something mathy you put a pie up there, it's immediately recognizable. Whereas lots of other mass symbols. They're just using boring old regular letters, you know, and it's that's that's not as interesting. But yeah, so I I'm in favor of,

well, I'm sorry for humanizing numbers like that. I mean, I am I am rather sleep deprived, and maybe maybe my brain is addled. But I think I am a bit more like that I quite like the

favor of this Liberty numbers. I just I think the the level of your description just just struck me as very funny.

I mean, it's an analogy isn't that you get that? Of course. I don't know anything. humans, but I think we can. I think we like I think people like, you know, just appeals to

people like the underdog is

Unknown Speaker 33:33

exactly what

I say. It's an underdog Who would have thought that some obscure irrational number just sit in a little way after three could have become the hero of numbers. And yet he did. He did. He said he sat there. He sat there thinking I'm never going to amount to anything. And then one day, he became the symbol that even CGP Grey talks about on his podcast.

Unknown Speaker 33:56

You should read his book.

Unknown Speaker 33:58

I think I've been beaten to Write a children's book about

Unknown Speaker 34:02

maybe I should think about it instead.

Yeah, right. What's going on with you? I think I think we have even for a celebrity number we have given pie. It's us today.