Brian(formerly neon4891) said:
Back in college, we had a guest lecturer from another university; at the time he had discovered either the largest or second largest Carmichael number (false prime) - I think it was something like a 10-Billion factor number. Somebody asked him if there was a reason for doing it, and he said "Absolutely! To show that I got farther than that Russian guy!" He went on to say that we got to the moon and back using only 5 digits of pi (or that's all that was necessary, even if more were used) so while someday we might be doing something that requires that level of precision, he can't yet fathom what that might be. The exercise of it was the point, it lead to the discovery of new methods and algorithms that could be used elsewhere.
Mr_Asa said:
One of my "that'd be neat" ideas for the RX-7 is an external tach. My mind goes to a strip of LEDs on the A-pillars that start lighting up at 5000 and are full-up at 9000 and start blinking. I figure it would look cool, give corner workers something to look at, and maybe distract them from seeing the cone I'd just hit 
mtn (Forum Supporter) said:
Brian(formerly neon4891) said:
Back in college, we had a guest lecturer from another university; at the time he had discovered either the largest or second largest Carmichael number (false prime) - I think it was something like a 10-Billion factor number. Somebody asked him if there was a reason for doing it, and he said "Absolutely! To show that I got farther than that Russian guy!" He went on to say that we got to the moon and back using only 5 digits of pi (or that's all that was necessary, even if more were used) so while someday we might be doing something that requires that level of precision, he can't yet fathom what that might be. The exercise of it was the point, it lead to the discovery of new methods and algorithms that could be used elsewhere.
I have pi memorized to ten places. (3.141592653) Looks like the picture was lost to the tinypic shutdown, I have no idea where I have it stored right now, but I set my trip odometer such that I hit that number in my Quantum. 314159 miles, 265.3 on the trip odometer.
That level of accuracy will get you a circle accurate enough to the width of an atom at Jupiter's orbital diameter, or some such craziness.
I also played with the odometer so I could get a picture of 356911 914.6...
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
I have pi memorized to ten places. (3.141592653) Looks like the picture was lost to the tinypic shutdown, I have no idea where I have it stored right now, but I set my trip odometer such that I hit that number in my Quantum. 314159 miles, 265.3 on the trip odometer.
That level of accuracy will get you a circle accurate enough to the width of an atom at Jupiter's orbital diameter, or some such craziness.
I also played with the odometer so I could get a picture of 356911 914.6...
My immediate thought when seeing that post was orbital calculations. A small error when slingshotting around a planet or moon could produce a gigantic error at the target distance. Imagine being off by .001 degrees @ Earth's orbit when heading toward Jupiter.
I had never looked into what kind of accuracy is actually needed, but I decided to just run some rough calcs using something similar the example in your post. Lets assume the Jupiter is a sphere, with a radius of an even 69,911,000 meters. Below is the surface circumference calculation of Jupiter (the errors would be much larger at the orbital diameter). Also note pi() in excel goes to 14 digits. The difference between 11 digits and 10 digits is 49 kilometers.
On a related note, I use CAD at work fairly frequently. I hate when people round pi or do a conversion incorrectly. One of my biggest pet peeves is people using 0.393 or 0.3937 to convert between inches in mm. An inch is defined as exactly 25.4mm. 1/25.4 is 0.0393700787401575. If you abbreviate conversions throughout your model, its not long before stuff doesn't work in computer-land where it needs to be exact.
Some context: I have a toddler who watches educational videos on YouTube. They're all pretty much on the same page until they get to the word "orange". Where in the hell do people come up with this nonsense?
In reply to Toyman01 (Moderately Supportive Dude) :
You know, it's a meme, because it's true...back in the mid-90's when I began college a friend of mine's dad had just bought a new NA. I remember all the ribbing he got from everybody about it being "a hairdresser's car", and, this being essentially the midwest, where a "real" sports car was either a Corvette if you had money, or a Mustang/ Camaro if you didn't, probably exacerbated that condition. But, the guy was an engineer, and didn't care about the car's image.
Pretty funny how things have changed. And my friend's dad was a trend setter.
914Driver said:
Some years ago I was helping a friend change the fuel pump and filter on his daughter's Volvo 240. We ended up needing the connector pipe assembly between them, so we called the local dealer parts to see if they had one. The counter guy said, "Yeah... the thing that looks like a crack pipe?"
I found a bunch of new material to steal. This one's for Wally.
