Re: pi

Patrick Dunn wrote:
>I said this to a number of mathematicians, and they beat me severely.
>Evidently this is a common misconception.  First of all, the digits of pi
>are not "random."  They showed me the proof, and although I cannot
>reproduce it, I was convinced.
It's true that the decimals of pi isn't random in the technical sense of
being unable to be compress. You can give an exact "description" of pi
without listing all the decimals (which'd be impossible in a finite
universe, anyway).

But one could argue that it's random in a more loose everyday sense of the
word - the only way to tell what the billionth decimal of pi is is to
calculate it, whereas we know that the billionth decimal of a third is "3".
Of course, this kind of fuzzy thinking is sure to drive mathematicians nuts.

                                                       Andreas

PS Note that if you flip a coin a hundred times, there's a decent chance
that the sequence of of heads and tails is, technically, not random (it
could be head-tail-head-tail repeated 25 times for instance), despite the
fact that the result of each flip is utterly impredictable!

PPS If we're to believe quantum mechanics, the result of an individual flip
of coin is not merely impredictable, but principially indeterministic - even
if you've got absolutely all information on the circumstances before the
flip, you can't tell what the reslut will be with absolute certainty.

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