IN WHICH Ross Rheingans-Yoo, a sometimes-poet and erstwhile student of Computer Science and Math, oc­cas­ion­al­ly writes on things of int­erest.

Reading Feed (last update: December 15)

A collection of things that I was glad I read. Views expressed by linked authors are chosen because I think they're interesting, not because I think they're correct, unless indicated otherwise.

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Blog: Marginal Revolution | A social credit system for scientists? — Chinese scientists, that is, and fraudsters at that. What, would you rather be soft on fraud?

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Comic: xkcd | arXiv — "...invaluable projects which, if they didn't exist, we would dismiss as obviously ridiculous and unworkable."

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Blog: JeffTK | Not losing things — "I almost never lose things, especially important things like my keys, laptop, or ear warmers. Here's an attempt to write up the system I use, in case it's useful to others..."

Blog: Tyler

A Meditation on π

note: This is not a volley in the $\pi-\tau$ debate, of which Vi Hart is undisputed monarch -- and right, as well -- as far as I'm concerned.

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A few number-theoretic $\pi$ facts:

• $\pi$ is provably transcendental, thus also irrational.
• $\pi$ is suspected, but not known, to be normal, a generalization of transcendence.
• $\pi$, provably, has Liouville-Roth constant (or irrationality coefficient) no greater than $7.6063$, and is suspected to have constant no greater than $2.5$. (As a consequence of its irrationality, its L-R constant is $\geq2$.)

Note, though, that each of these things is also true of literally 100% of numbers. And before you scoff at my use of the figurative 'literally', no no -- measure-theoretically, the non-(normal, transcendental, irrational, irrationality-coefficient-less-than-8) numbers make up exactly, mathematically 0% of the number line.

For the record: irrational algebraics like $\sqrt2$ are also nonterminating and nonrepeating, and it's not clear what features of the stringwise-local decimal expansion (which seems to be the only thing $\pi$ enthusiasts focus on,