Helen of Pi

"The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi".

This quote is from Steven Strogatz, a professor of mathematics at Cornell.

Wikipedia shows it in the simplest of visual way. Take any circle of your choice. Draw 4 of them next to each other as shown.

Irrespective of the size of the radius, the circumference of the circle when spread will always give you pi length.

One of the least expected way of approximating pi is by dropping paper clips! All you need is a ruler, a pen and a few paper clips.

Draw parallel lines on paper/floor that have a perpendicular gap of 2 paper clip length. Count the total number of clips you have. And just throw them on it. That's it!

Originally done by Buffon with needles, you just measured pi. No circles, no diameter, no measuring circumference. Not convinced?

Count the ones that touched the line. When you divide the total number of clips by the ones that touched the line, you will get closer & closer to pi! The larger number of clips you throw, the closer you get to pi. You got to do it to believe it! Do it in your math class and I am sure, you have lessened few more mathophobes!

A Numberphile video on it for the more inclined.

A few years ago Shankar Mahadevan's 'Breathless' song was a rage. It is a song where he seems to have sung non-stop. It needs to end somewhere and Javed Akhtar's lyrics bring it to closure. Truly speaking, if you are searching for a song whose notes never end, come to the Pi song.

If you say you are not musically inclined but profoundly wordy, here is another version to dig in, courtesy Mike Keith. Few excerpts below.

At the time of its writing in 1995, this composition in Standard Pilish, a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", was one of the longest texts ever written using the π constraint, in which the number of letters in each successive word "spells out" the digits of π, 740 digits in this example.

Note: The below mentioned version has only 118 digits, for the full version check his website (http://www.cadaeic.net/naraven.htm).

Poe, E.
Near a Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
    Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
    An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
        "This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
    Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
    That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
        Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.

Ominously, curtains parted (my serenity outsmarted),
    And fear overcame my being - the fear of "forevermore".
Fearful foreboding abided, selfish sentiment confided,
    As I said, "Methinks mysterious traveler knocks afore.
        A man is visiting, of age threescore."

Anti-climax to this unending nerdiness comes from SMBC Comics.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1777

Pi refuses this abrupt ending, for it is infinite! And a TED Ed video sings it more.

Recreational mathematician and comedian Matt Parker brings it back to drawing room conversations.

How can the country which invented zero, would have left unamoured by this celebrity number? This clip from the celebrated BBC series The Story of Math where Prof Marcus Du Sautoy shares the method how Madhava, the mathematician from Kerala, India has calculated Pi in 15th century, two centuries before Leibniz. Simple & elegant.

After exploring it visually, hands-on, historically, musically, comically and poetically, where is Helen? Was the title and image a clickbait? Partially true. Poems expanded it, songs expanded it. How about a math meme (ok, not exactly a meme, but a celebration of it) with a dash of Bollywood sprinkled at it? With apologies to Majrooh Sultanpuri and in the spirit of 'less is more' here is the winning entry by yours truly that year that owes its origin to the beauty of Helen Ann Richardson of then Rangoon and of course to pi quite unexpectedly!

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