Pi Day
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Researcher breaks Pi calculation record with the help of NVIDIA
Yesterday's self-congratulatory pat on the back to anyone reciting Pi to ten digits might feel a bit inadequate compared to Santa Clara University's Ed Karrels. The researcher has broken the record for calculating Darren Aronofsky's favorite number, taking the ratio to eight quadrillion places right of the decimal. Given the location of the University, you'll be unsurprised to learn which hardware maker's gear was used to break the record. Karrels will be showing off the new digits at the GPU technology conference in San Jose, demonstrating the CUDA-voodoo necessary to harness all of that Kepler-based computing power. [Image Credit: Ed Karrels]
Nevermind the Pi music, here's what Tau sounds like (video)
There's a heated debate going on in the exciting world of mathematics that pits notoriously irrational pi against relative newcomer tau. Wherever side of the fence your math club's allegiance may lie, a quick listen to Michael Blake's newest nerd composition could have your circle singing a different equation. Perhaps spurred by the copyright brouhaha that yanked his earlier musical extrapolation -- What Pi Sounds Like -- from the YouTubes, Blake set this interpretation of the controversial constant to 126 decimal places and let'er rip at 125.6 bpm. What follows is a not-unpleasant symphony that should have Bjork's producers calling for a collaboration. Full video for the prog-rock nation after the break.
It's Pi Day. Do you know what 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 sounds like?
It may not be marked on most calendars, but if you're a math nerd (or a nerd in general -- of which we count ourselves, obviously), you know what March 14th is. It's 3/14, otherwise known as the first three digits of Pi. That's since become a minor geek holiday of sorts, and has prompted some fairly unique celebrations over the years. One of the latest comes from musician Michael John Blake, who interpreted Pi to the first 31 decimal places as musical notes and turned it into a song -- played at 157 beats per minute, no less (or half of 314). As it turns out, however, Blake wasn't the first to come up with the idea -- composer Lars Erickson wrote his own "Pi Symphony" a few years back, and has now sparked a bit of a copyright spat on YouTube over who actually owns the rights to Pi in musical form. Head on past the break to check out both versions for yourself.
