[R] Value of 'pi'

[Ravi Varadhan]

Nice to know that the `pi' can be sliced in so many different ways!  

There are exactly 3.154 x e08 seconds in a (non-leap) year.  So the error in your approximation is less than 0.4%.

Ravi.
________________________________________
From: Thomas Lumley [tlumley at uw.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 4:41 PM
To: Ravi Varadhan
Cc: Bentley Coffey; Vincy Pyne; r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Value of 'pi'

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 2:12 AM, Ravi Varadhan <rvaradhan at jhmi.edu> wrote:
>
> I have also heard (courtesy: John Nash) that `pi' is the ratio of actual time it takes to complete your thesis to the anticipated time.


And I find it a useful mnemonic that there are pi times ten million
seconds in a year (accurate to better than half a percent).

     -thomas

--
Thomas Lumley
Professor of Biostatistics
University of Auckland