Hmm. There has been quite a lot of book-related excitement recently which I was going to discuss with you, but it’s come to my attention that this Saturday is a rather important event:
It’s Pi day!
Yes, that’s a thing. It’s much more special this year, though, because take a peek at the first 10 digits:
3.141592653
It will be the 14th day of the 3rd month (shh, it’s that strange American way of writing dates) and it will also be 2015. You could also go down to 9:26:53 on that day, but that might be getting a little too specific. let’s just appreciate the awesomeness that is Ļ, okay? Here, have a nice interactive graphic about circles. (Or alternatively, begin memorising it to 50 digits as I have. Maybe do that after.)
Now, sometime at the end of last term our maths teacher was basically just like ‘Scrap the syllabus let’s do something cool’ and we all spent the lesson doing Conway’s Game of Life. (No, not the one with the little cars and people and passports and jobs and stuff.) It’s basically a computer program with these four rules:
- 1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
- 2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- 3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
- 4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
It’s fun to play around on the versions that are available online, but if you just want to look at the pretty gifs then here is just one of several tumblrs devoted to GoL.
See, wasn’t that some pretty maths? *swoons*
And that’s pretty much it. There are some really awesome patterns, though – including one that goes on forever, for some reason called the Gospel Glider Gun, as seen above.
Ooh, another writing + STEM person. I’m not so good at maths myself, although the coincidence of Pi Day on 2015 is pretty awesome š And my goodness, that biology game sounds fun. Maybe I should propose including this in next year’s syllabi XD
I’m not fantastic at actually doing the maths, but there are some beautiful parts that I just can’t resist!
Haha, I think would just end up staring at the all the pretty colours if we did it any more in class š
When I was in middle school we used to celebrate Pi day with lots of activities and yeah we basically got to eat pie and it was awesome and Pi day is awesome yo
It’s kind of a shame that’s in Saturday this year. Who knows, maybe I’m missing a day of doing nothing at school except for eating pie? š
I know!!!
HAPPY PI DAY!
*commends herself for reading post right on time*
Wow, the coincidence this year is amazing. We’e not getting this date again until a thousand years, so celebrate it while it’s lasts š Ooh, I haven’t heard of the game before, but it sounds super cool!
HAPPY PI DAY TO YOU AS WELL!
Really, that is excellent timing. š ‘Tis a once in a lifetime experience!
I actually thought that we were going to be playing the board game Game of Life when our teacher told us about it…
Happy Pi Day! The math you mentioned is super cool, and the Game of Life sounds interesting to me, just because it isn’t something I’ve heard of before. Enjoy stuffing your face with ice cream and pie today! š
Om nom nom, happy Pi Day to you as well! I’m glad that I’ve informed you of something new š
Happy Pi day! *gives you pie* xP
š Happy Pi Day to you too! *takes pie* *hastily grabs another pie off shelf to hand to you*
*gobbles up pie because pie is good*
Did you make sure it was peanut butter cup pie? xD
*hides* I’m afraid it wasn’t! (I’ve actually never had peanut butter cup pie? :P)
Heh. Most people haven’t. *coaxes you out of hiding and brings you peanut butter cup pie*