11–20 of 39 posts
Pi ~ 3, but we also often need Pi^2, which is better approximated as 10. (I actually got into an argument about rounding Pi^2 to 10 once with a person who liked to round Pi to 3 ...)
It's a little unrelated, but if you ever need to know the number of seconds in a year, it's pi x 10^7 to within .5%.
Pi ~ 3, but we also often need Pi^2, which is better approximated as 10. (I actually got into an argument about rounding Pi^2 to 10 once with a person who liked to round Pi to 3 ...)
I remember using Pi^2 to be approximately g (the acceleration due to gravity near the earth's surface). This comes in real handy when simplifying the time period of a pendulum.
It's a little unrelated, but if you ever need to know the number of seconds in a year, it's pi x 10^7 to within .5%.
Proof for the curious: http://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+seconds+in+a+year+d...
This guy sounds like every microelectronics prof ever. :) I took that to heart when doing the exams and it make the impossible possible.
I really enjoyed it when my EE professors would simply erase components of a circuit diagram if they didn't matter and they made things complicated. I think that had an impact on my approach to solving problems.
Our teacher always said she accepted all result with an error of less than 10% if we did that by making the calculus easier.
So I started by "let's define pi=3"
I got a bad grade on that one, even after I protested that the answer was within the required specifications, so afterwards as a nag, I was always over-precise with her assignments - like always included electron mass in nucleus calculations :-)
(it was previously on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093703)