Man Discovers Pi Repeats Itself At The Hyper-Thousandth Level While Eating A Heirloom Tomato Sandwich
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 09.30.06
An amateur mathematician, Hagar Dronbecker, has discovered that Pi repeats itself at the hyper-thousandth level. The idea came upon him while he was eating a heirloom green and red tomato sandwich drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. (Note: the photo above is not the actual sandwich but an approximation.)
Apparently, the meta-fractal pattern of the Green Stripe and the Brandywine tomatoes led him to infer that Pi would indeed repeat itself at the hyper-thousandth level, due to the fact that Pi could not be any more random than the quasi-repeated scalene curve of the organically-grown fruit.
More specifically, the point of repetition in Pi occurs when it starts to move into a controversial set of numbers mathematicians call "NLNcHT Numbers" or New Large Numbers Considered to be in the Hyper-Thousands. The repeating sequence consists of the following numerals: "949700010007949". Some have argued that this is not a true repetition per se, but rather a numerical palindrome. Undaunted, Dronbecker will be submitting the sequence for review to The International Society for Large Numbers and Sequences, for official verification.
Is this some sort of very subtle joke that I just don't get?
Hmm, maybe they were organic tomatoes ;) ?
Ryan's right, what's up with this?! Cute, but I think a post to theonion.com ended up here on treehugger by mistake ;)
*An heirloom is what it should read. :)
I pronounce the "h" in heirloom, hence "a" is appropriate.
It has to be a joke. a google search for NLNcHT turns up one random string of text. If it was a mathematical concept it would have thousands.
For the record I do not get it either
You just blew my mind, man.
(Being a progressive grrl, I have no problems with this post.)
ProgGrrl,
I'm glad! I found it quite compelling myself.
Justin
I reckon this has repercussions for wind mill designs?? After so many revolutions the diameter of the blades starts to change maybe. :P
An odd post, but you could probably Google it for more info.
Whilst in theory its correct that Pi repeats itself after some huge distance, Google doesn't actually come up with anything with the term "Hyper-Thousands", and there's no references to anything in this article, no links or owt
Okay... what does this have to do with Green/sustainability, the hyper-thousandth level? I'm sure all the math nerds are stoked and will rush to eat up all the organic heirloom tomatoes.
Uh, WTF?
What does this have to do with hugging trees or environmentalism? And where's the link to the source? Over 2 billion digits of Pi have been calculated, and no pattern of repetition has ever been found. What the heck is this? A joke?
I'm going with the idea that this is a joke. A really tantalizing joke, though...
I don't get the joke. :\
Usually it's the burritos and refried beans that repeat...pi just gives me a little indigestion.
Pi was proven transcendental a long long time ago. It does not repeat, not even "in theory". This story is complete and utter fiction and isn't even funny to make up for it.
Joke? Yes. Delicious looking sandwich? You decide.
Pi is supposed to be infinately random, yes? Thus, obviously, any sequence of numbers you can come up with will be infinately repeated in pi if you calculate it out far enough, say the "hyper-thousands" of digits.
Also, we already have names for these "hyper-thansands" of numbers... I call them millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, etc.
This Hagar Dronbecker fellow is an idiot. I challenge him to a battle of wits. I will scan these forums for the next few days waiting for his reply.
-Graham
I was waiting for the "he had seconds on desert" punch line....you know like a cherry pie or something.
First, Heirloom is said "airloom", so it is an heirloom.
If something doesn't appear on google, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Mathematical communities are hyper-specific, and it could just be a special term rarely found online.
yeah...and eating a Big Mac will let you on a Theory of Everything
That's almost like saying whenever i see the numbers 1,1,1,1,1,1 sequentually found within a larger number then it means the number repeats... but at some lesser "hyper" level... stupid, no one cares about the fact that it is theoretically probable that this number repeats itself.
Well, since I get no results in google news or web searches for this Hagar fellow, nor the "International Society for Large Numbers and Sequences" nor "NLNcHT Numbers" I would have to agree with the other posters here, that this is some kind of odd joke...
If this is a joke, please explain what the tomatoes have to do with it? I think its a joke because from what I recall it has been proven that pi does not repeat. If it repeated, it could be reduced to a fraction and we already know it is irrational.
that was extremely vague. as a fan of maths, i doubt this bloke just discovered something new about the famed Pi. all he has is a good PR man.
I could see this post on boing boing maybe but what does this have to do with treehugger?
Of course it's a joke. Three zeros in sequence would propagate zeros to infinity.
It's easy enough to test. Beyond hyper-thousands, people have already calculated Pi to billions of digits. Here's one web site that lets you search the first 200 million digits of Pi:
http://www.angio.net/pi/bigpi.cgi
The result:
> The string 949700010007949
> did not occur in the first
> 200000000 digits of pi after
> position 0.
But if you want to make sure that you're just not getting the joke, you can check with google to make sure the term doesn't exist (at least not until this page gets indexed).
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hyper-Thousandth+Level%22
The jokes just aren't funny when you have to explain them... :(
Joshua: If you pronounce the 'h' in 'heirloom,' you're pronouncing it wrong.
"An heirloom." It's really not that hard to understand a/an with the letter 'h.' Really now, is it?
If it's any help...42? I read it in a book somewhere.
It is absolutely not corrent in theory, practice, or otherwise that pi repeats itself over and over again after a certain distance (a certain sequence of digits may appear more than once which is a different matter). If it did, then pi would be a rational number, meaning it could be represented as one integer divided by another. However, pi is irrational; this fact has been known since the 1700s.
Here is one proof for the mathematically inclined:
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~hr/numb/pi-irr.html
Ah, yes; 42 is the answer. (from The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
But why on earth is this on Treehugger?
i once figured out the meaning of life whilst eating a po-boy hoggie, but it was SOOOOOOO delicious, i forgot what i was thinking about and lost everything...
Yes, that's nice and all, but what are the little red things on top of the tomatoes?
;-)
I enjoyed this post tremendously! To think... if he'd been eating a "regular" aka hothouse tomato with it's regular rounded baloon shape, he never would have had a chance to discover this mathematical theory! Only the ribbed and undulating sides of an heriloom brandywine could inspire the thought. Heirloom tomatoes as mathematical muse! Brilliant!
And the pink things on top of the tomatoes in the sandwich *look* to be pink peppercorns (not actually peppercorns, but rather a berry, pungent and slightly sweet).
Wonder if his sandwich "repeated" itself later, too.
pi doesn't repeat itself, even in theory. Indeed, it can be proven *not* to repeat itself: http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/pi_proof.txt
...perhaps some mushrooms might have been on that sandwich as well??
I'm a bit stymied as to why this on TreeHugger. I'd be somewhat stymied had I found it anywhere else, too, due it being completely and utterly nonsensical, but it seems to have nothing to do with environmentalism except that it mentions tomatos.
I mean, on a certain level, the guy's right—but if he found a huge palindrome in there, that's no big deal. Pi is irrational, meaning that we can write down decimal digits forever and we'll never be any closer to the end of it, and we still won't have found a continually repeating sequence of numbers (ie, it will never start going "475475475475"). If that's the case, you can find any number you want to in here, and you can find it as many times as you like. Somewhere in pi's slew of digits you'll find your phone number followed immediately by the number of hairs on your head. You just have to look far enough.
So yes, eventually, you'll find some interesting patterns. But that's just because you've got an infinite amount of sort-of-random numbers to draw from, not due to any underlying pattern in pi itself.
And, coincidentally, you posted this one scant day short of half a year away from April Fools.
The post is funny but the comments are priceless.
Don't Treehugger readers have AN sense of hoomer?
I don't see any mathematical analysis here. If I am repeating someone, I apologize.
If the next digit in the sequence "949700010007949" is not a "1," it is not repeating. If it is a "1," and its calculation can be repeated by several computers using the accepted power series that defines pi, then pi repeats that sequence from that point on.
Personally, I am certain that pi is a rational, non-repeating number. It will take a mathemagician to change my mind.
I am not a mathematician, just a math-loving EE.
Why's everyone whining so much about this? Seriously, what's the point? You're wasting more time complaining than you did reading it. The End.
Why are so many people whining about the whiners? This article clearly deserves being whined at!
THE End.
We're whining about this because we come to Treehugger for actual, accurate information on the state of environmentalism, green products, etc., and finding a nonsensical post about something entirely random that seems to have no basis in reality has irked some of us.
Sure, I have a sense of humor, but when I want to read something funny, I go to The Onion or my favorite webcomics. I expect Treehuggger to carry news, not make stuff up, and when that implicit agreement is broken for no apparent reason, it bothers me.