I’ve been a little absent from this blog lately, with Minnie and guests writing all the posts. (And more guest posts coming soon! Actually, 1 tomorrow…)

Besides working, I have been thinking about things.

Things like…

1. People who don’t like ice in their drinks

How is it, having been with Minnie for around 8 years, I’ve only recently learned that she doesn’t like ice in a glass of water. I’m amazed that this is both a thing, and that she has been doing it wrong for so long. Sometimes I think I may be living in the Truman Show.

2. Pi—3.14159265358979323846264338327950…

Pi—this comes up a bit, and with it, the general hugeness of numbers. Do you know that with knowing pi to only 32 decimal places (as shown above)—and having a very accurate measurement of the diameter of the Milky Way (the galaxy, not the chocolate bar), you could measure its circumference to an accuracy of 1 atom? Indeed, and there is even a mnemonic to help you remember this, in case you find yourself in some kind of zombie apocalypse situation where all pi-calculating technology has been lost, and you need to cut the right length of ribbon to wrap around the galaxy:

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling

In mystic force, and magic spelling

Celestial sprites elucidate

All my own striving can’t relate

Or locate they who can cogitate

And so finally terminate.

Finis.

If you can remember this little poem, then write out the number of letters in each word, you have pi to 31 decimal places… (and the next number is 0, so you’ll just have to remember that bit yourself… as there are no zero-letter words… Except for this one: )

The thing people tend to forget—or not understand in the first place—is that every decimal place you add increases the accuracy by 1000%.

NASA only use pi to 15 decimal places to calculate interplanetary flight.

Actually, for most purposes, this shorter mnemonic will do:

How I wish I could calculate pi…
3 .     1   4     1     5            9         2