F.U. News Mailbag: Pi Day Edition

So last December, I received this email, which I'm sure is from a scammer or spammer or some other nefarious person:

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From: Pierce [If that is his real name] <*snip*>
To: JoeCool (at) gmail (dot) com
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:21 AM
Subject: I love your blog! [This is how I know he's up to no good; no one who is not related to me biologically or through marriage, a former college roommate of mine, or my confirmation sponsor, loves my blog]

Hi Joseph Belland, [Not only is he evil an untrustworthy, but he's also a mind-reader! How else could he know my full name? Maybe he's a Sith. Oh, wouldn't that be cool to have an evil Sith who's stalking me via my blog?]

I really enjoyed reading your blog. [More lies!] In particular, I liked your link to the Pi Song (2007) and the 10,000 Pi digits (2006) [Okay, those were kinda cool]; you offer up some great suggestions on how to celebrate Pi Day as well! [Well, thank you, evil Sith lord!]

I just finished this cool infographic on Visualizing Pi and thought you might be interested. You can check it out here: http://www.onlineschooling.net/visualizing-pi.

I thought your readers might enjoy the graphic and wanted to see if you would consider posting a link to it from your blog [I'll consider it, but no promises]. Let me know what you think of it.

Thanks! Pierce

Pierce Brown Online Schooling.net *snip*@sreducationgroup.org

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What do I think of it, eh, Pierce? I think I don't have to worry about content for Pi day this year!

That and the graph is pretty cool. You should check it out, but for the fact that Pierce is probably an evil scammer Sith lord, and visiting his site will download Dark Side midichlorians to your computer that will fry your CPU, erase your hard drive, and steal your personal information, in that order. Such is the power of Dark Side midichlorians. That and they have the ability to make thousands of fan boys cry out in terror.

What I found most interesting was the part about how many significant digits are required to compute various accuracies of circles. Of note: 39 digits can compute the circumference of any circle within the observable universe to the width of a hydrogen atom. Looking up the width of a hydrogen atom in Planck lengths (3.1x10²⁴) on Wolfram Hart Alpha, tells us that 63 digits of pi would be the theoretical limit to accuracy. Meaning any more digits of pi past 63 could not, in any physical way, give you a more accurate measurement. And yet pi is infinite. Trippy, huh?

Source: Online Schooling