The number pi has an evil twin

579 points
1/21/1970
6 months ago
by pkaeding

Comments


dclaw

This discussion helped me discover my new favorite map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peirce_Quincuncial_Projec...

6 months ago

thih9

More projections in a friendly pdf: “An Album of Map Projections”[1], the one above is on page 190.

For a more festive example see Berghaus star projection on page 156.

[1]: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1453/report.pdf (1989)

6 months ago

dclaw

OK, that's fucking awesome. Thanks

6 months ago

_steady

oh wow that's a lot like a maximally extended penrose diagram

6 months ago

extraduder_ire

I believe I have seen the same projection used in a mod for quake 3 for dramatically increased POV.

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

GistNoesis

And to protect you from it, you can use the following lucky clover charm (polar plot r=cos(2theta) ): https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=+plot+r%3Dcos%282theta%... whose perimeter can also define a constant 4*E(-3) ~ 4 * 2.4221

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=plot+r%3Dcos%282theta%2...

6 months ago

soneca

> ” This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'leminscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the leminiscate in my next post.”

This got me confused, so I went to check. Apparently ”lemniscate” is the correct spelling.

6 months ago

johncarlosbaez

Fixed - thanks.

6 months ago

thechao

Hey, John — Matt Parker mentioned in one of his ellipse videos the fact that every elliptical ratio has its own pi-like constant. He just quickly rattles the fact off, but never delves into it. Do you know of any research into trying to characterize the family of pi? I mean, beyond its evil cousins.

6 months ago

klodolph

For a circle, pi is the ratio of the circumference to its diameter. Every ellipse also has a circumference-to-diameter ratio. Well, two ratios, since ellipses have both major and minor diameters. You might think that there would be some kind of clever formula that let you calculate this ratio, but there isn’t! Instead, these pi-like numbers for ellipses are expressed as integrals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_integral

Scroll down to “Complete elliptic integral of the second kind”. That is your search term for looking it up. It is kind of a surprise that there isn’t some neat formula for calculating the circumference of an ellipse. The formula given is:

  C = 4 a E(e)
The function E(e) here can be calculated in a few different ways, but it is really just defined as an integral that measures the length of a single ellipse arc.

Here, e is eccentricity. E(0) therefore gives π/4 since a circle has eccentricity 0. E(1) also therefore gives 1. So the E(e) function goes from π/4 to 1 as e goes from 0 to 1.

6 months ago

divbzero

π is derived from the circle, which is defined by distance from a single point.

ϖ is derived from the lemniscate of Bernoulli, which is defined by distances from two points.

Is there an analogous constant that is derived from a shape defined by distances from three points?

6 months ago

dahart

Yes, definitely. Pi is just the perimeter of the circle, and varpi is the perimeter of the lemniscate. If you use three points, you get three tear-drops, and you can compute the perimeter of that.

Let’s call it a trilemniscate. ;)

Here’s a 3d plot of it. If you rotate to view it from +Z downward, then you’ll see the trilemniscate, which is where the volume intersects with the XY plane. Note I subtracted 1 from the product in order to visualize the plane intersection. (And you can turn off the 3 points version and turn on the 2 points version to compare.)

https://www.desmos.com/3d/dl9v2vqbqb

One interesting note about 2 points vs 3 points. The area inside the lemniscate and trilemniscate is the same! (True for more points, as long as they’re evenly space on a circle). The perimeter, of course, goes to infinity as you add more points.

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

VHRanger

I mean the concept of distance from 3 points introduces a mess of metrics or even measure theory.

2 points always have a shortest path between each other, so the constant is about this fact. For 3 points you have the whole universe of possible triangle shapes to contend with.

6 months ago

vitus

Shortest path between two points still depends on your metric.

For instance, if you're constrained to travel along the surface of Earth, your shortest path is going to travel along a great circle, rather than pass through the interior of the sphere.

That said, you could, for instance, pick the three vertices of an equilateral triangle (using the Euclidean distance as your metric of choice, as we do in order to derive the lemniscate and the circle), and again deal with the product of the distances from each vertex.

You again start with small circles around each vertex, which eventually expand to a single looping curve, and then into ovals encircling the entire triangle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini_oval#Generalizations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_lemniscate#Erd%C5%9...

6 months ago

jovial_cavalier

It's easy to generalize this to more points.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/fo7tqlfjgo

6 months ago

clort

it sounds like you are suggesting it might be turtles all the way down?

6 months ago

cl3misch

> I'm not enough of a cultural relativist to believe there's a civilization that cares more about the shape ∞ than the shape ◯.

Maybe these are "logarithmic" beings, as opposed to us "linear" beings? The lemniscate is based on geometric mean, which is basically multiplicative mean and/or mean in log-space -- as opposed to the additive mean in linear space.

If we assume we are linear beings good at intuitive addition but somewhat bad at intuitive multiplication, there could exist beings which live in log-space and whose minds are based on multiplication. Their circle would be the lemniscate.

6 months ago

tibbetts

Humans are actually intuitively log scale thinkers. That is, humans without the kind of early arithmetic training that Westerners get will think more in terms of ratios than differences. There are theories it is more evolutionarily adaptive.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-natural-log/

6 months ago

jcelerier

Isn't it also related to our physical perception? Both hearing and vision at least have somewhat logarithmic properties (e.g. response to point-source brightness, and hearing frequency response)

6 months ago

dustingetz

fibonacci retrace shows up in liquid markets a lot

6 months ago

nayuki

Humans have quite a few logarithmic responses: Brightness of light, loudness of sound, musical octaves and relative pitch.

6 months ago

dxbydt

aside: As the Professor points out, the ratio of pi to its evil twin is ~1.198, the arithmetic-geometric mean of sqrt(2) and 1. The geometric part involves a square root, and square roots are expensive. So I was like, well, if the AM converges to GM, then due to AM-GM-HM inequality, it must converge to the harmonic mean as well. And the HM does not need an expensive square root!

https://imgur.com/a/UkxkPzW

Its quite wild that the AM GM convergence is almost immediate - in just 2 steps, whereas to get a decent convergence for the Gauss's constant via HM, you need like 15 steps.You can dispense with expensive operators like square root but you end up paying for it with numerous iterations.

6 months ago

Chinjut

The c value you compute depends on computing the b value, though. It's not a recursion carried out in a way which avoids square roots. It's just carrying out the same AM-GM sequence computation, and then taking a certain weighted harmonic mean over that sequence, which converges just because that original sequence converges anyway.

Note that the arithmetic-harmonic mean I think you were going for is just the geometric mean (not the arithmetic-geometric mean, just the geometric mean simpliciter; see https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Arithmetic-HarmonicMean.html).

6 months ago

TaurenHunter

Other notable constants and where they show up:

Euler–Mascheroni Constant (integrals and sums involving the harmonic series, Gamma functions)

Catalan’s Constant (certain trigonometric series, lattice Green’s function)

Feigenbaum Constants (logistic map, chaos in dynamical systems)

Khinchin’s Constant (partial quotients in simple continued fractions)

Glaisher–Kinkelin Constant (asymptotic expansions of the Barnes G-function, combinatorial limits and certain product expansions)

Ramanujan’s Constant (complex multiplication of elliptic curves)

Omega Constant (Omega times e to the power of Omega = 1, Lambert W function, x^x^x^... = 2)

6 months ago

rak1507

What do you mean by x^x^x^... = 2? Isn't the solution to that sqrt(2)?

6 months ago

77pt77

f(x,n) = f(x,n-1) ^ x

f(x,1) = x

c_n is such that f(c_n,n) = 2

c = lim c_n

6 months ago

rak1507

Do you mean f(x,n-1)^x or x^f(x,n-1)? With the first definition, c=1, the second, c=sqrt(2). I'm still not seeing the connection to omega.

6 months ago

867-5309

please explain how Ramanujan’s Constant is relevant to operations on elliptic curves

6 months ago

ctrlrsf

How do you even know this?

6 months ago

ska

Spend some time doing math and you'll pick up a few without noticing. Somewhat path dependent, but they do crop up.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_constants

6 months ago

77pt77

Some of those are quite obscure

6 months ago

ska

And some aren't; it's not a list of "commonly encountered" constants, just a list.

6 months ago

yukioikeda

It seems obvious that these are not twins. We can only say that π and ϖ are two among the infinite multitude of siblings ϖₙ.

6 months ago

slippy

Hmm. Why only 2? Why not 3 points? Can you find an interesting curve produced by a constant product of distances from N points? Maybe even in higher dimensions, for 1 point, you have a sphere. What is the shape for 2 points? Is it more like an hourglass-like double droplet?

6 months ago

amelius

There is a generalization:

> Back before Twitter became a Nazi bar, I issued a challenge there: find a whole series of numbers like pi, each with its own bunch of formulas. @duetosymmetry took me up on this and invented the numbers ϖₙ: (...)

6 months ago

plank

Yes. But the question remains: is there a geometrical analogue?

6 months ago

knappa

On the 3 points bit: One and two points are special. In each of these cases, there is, up to translations and uniform scaling, only one configuration. When you have three points, though, there are as many configurations as there are similar triangles. You could probably get a number for each similarity class of triangle, but you shouldn't expect to get a constant across all classes.

6 months ago

metaphor

> This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'leminscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the leminiscate in my next post.

Two of these...do not belong?

6 months ago

bregma

Shakespeare often spelt the same word differently at different times. If it was good enough for Billy Shakespeare, it should be good enough for modern-day mathematicians, forsooth.

6 months ago

somat

"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."

  -- Andrew Jackson
Unfortunately Daniel Webster ruined that for the rest of us.
6 months ago

initramfs

I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare would spell the same wird dyfferntli as if heez noom is Sheikhspier een uh deefirind koontri.

6 months ago

stogot

This might feed the “Shakespeare was not one person” theory

6 months ago

zdragnar

The first of Shakespeare plays predate the first published English documentary. It was uncommon for spellings to be inconsistent or change between writings to be easier for a particular audience (in this case, actors) to be able to read.

6 months ago

mckn1ght

I’m still making my way through it, but reading a history of shakespearean/elizabethan england, the first written publications of shakespeare’s plays that were accessible to the general public weren’t written by the man himself (if indeed he was singular).

There were entire efforts put towards pirating the plays by writing them, mostly from memory. It’s believed that someone in the crowd creating a stenographic copy would’ve been noticed so this is a less likely explanation. The memorial effort likely involved both audience and actors. “Official” versions meant to direct the stage productions might have been smuggled out or lost and found.

I haven’t gotten to the part yet that connects to the standard versions we have today. Some official versions were released to correct the record on bad pirated versions. Sometimes theaters would sell official versions to shore up funds.

Maybe this would explain the multiple shakespeare theory as well as writing inconsistencies?

6 months ago

lupire

You wouldn't download Hamlet's pirate story!

6 months ago

drivers99

I guess you mean:

first published English dictionary

and

It wasn't uncommon / It was common

6 months ago

zdragnar

Yes, I was rather tired and typing on my phone required more correcting of the autocorrect feature than I could manage.

6 months ago

Jetrel

Yeah; frankly, in almost all languages, some early works of literature tend to be THE thing that establishes canonical spelling. A lot of this is simply that they act as an argument-settler when two people can't agree how something "ought to be" spelled. In fact, sometimes they go so far as to warp pronunciation, cementing little verbal quirks that only some speakers had.

6 months ago

adrian_b

"Lemniscate" is the correct spelling. All the other variants are mistyped.

6 months ago

yard2010

It's quite funny imo that someday english people were like "forget about latin or german, greek is lit! Let's use greek"

6 months ago

msravi

Why stop at greek or arabic when you can go all the way to sanskrit?

The words for sine and cosine derive from the sanskrit jiva (meaning bowstring, i.e., the chord of a circle)[1]. Sine and cosine were respectively jya and koti-jya, which got transcribed into arabic without the vowel (where it meant nothing). They then pronounced the vowel in the wrong place, calling it jeb (which meant pocket or fold in arabic)[2]. Then this wrong word got translated into latin as sinus (fold), and hence we have sine and cosine!

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jy%C4%81,_koti-jy%C4%81_and_...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_and_cosine#Etymology

6 months ago

thaumasiotes

The wikipedia link has this occurring in the 12th century. But Hellenistic astronomers were already working with sine tables. What did they call the concept?

6 months ago

rsynnott

A healthy mixture was always preferred in maths and science. This is occasionally taken to extremes; the name reverse transcriptase, an enzyme used by retroviruses, is a combo of English, Latin and Greek!

Arabic is also popular, particularly in maths.

6 months ago

flobosg

> Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device.

―C. P. Scott

6 months ago

xanderlewis

Is it? I can only think of (the very frequently noted) ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithm’.

6 months ago

rsynnott

Also ‘zero’, and ‘cipher’ (which, oddly, derive from the same word). And ‘average’. There are a few of them.

6 months ago

xanderlewis

Interesting. I'm not sure we can really call these arabic-derived, though. They do seem to ultimately trace back to fairly unrelated arabic words, but their first use in mathematics (much later) seems to have come in the form of a mixture of words from European languages. The two examples I gave seem to be more legitimately Arabic in origin.

6 months ago

dizhn

Not math but I just learned alkali is the word for "ash" in Arabic.

6 months ago

dudeinjapan

And “alcohol”, frequently consumed at science and math conferences

6 months ago

Sharlin

"Alcohol" has a very interesting etymology, too.

6 months ago

DiggyJohnson

As others have said, there are a few celestial terms that come to mind:

  - azimuth
  - zenith
  - nadir
Also some chemistry terms, again just from top of brain, might be wrong:

  - alchemy
  - elixir
  - arsenic
  - alkali
6 months ago

xanderlewis

Nadir always seemed very obviously Arabic to me. Weirdly, I first encountered it in a book on category theory, and only after that did I start to hear it used in everyday English to mean the opposite of 'apex'.

6 months ago

samatman

It's the opposite of zenith, another word ultimately derived from Arabic.

The difference between an apex and a zenith is that an apex exists as a point in space, while a zenith is a direction, with no fixed point which may be said to be "the" zenith. There are other differences given that apex has a few related meanings, but this is the main one.

6 months ago

xanderlewis

Ah, yes. I knew it wasn’t quite the right word.

6 months ago

pfdietz

Sofa!

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

ajmurmann

Dolphin, music (from muse), logic, ethics, physics, mathematics, pharmacy, angel, comedy, drama. The list of Greek loan words that are shared by many European languages goes on and on

Edit: I think almost every word with "ph" in it is from Greek and "th" in languages other than English.

6 months ago

lolinder

They're asking about Arabic loanwords.

6 months ago

FredPret

If you add all Latin words with Greek origins, most European languages are really forms of Greek

6 months ago

nicwilson

azimuth is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head

6 months ago

dredmorbius

You'll find "zenith" at your feet.

6 months ago

samatman

You're thinking of nadir, also Arabic. The zenith is in the opposite direction.

6 months ago

dredmorbius

Gah! So much for my wit.

6 months ago

jjtheblunt

The sheriff says "hold my beer".

6 months ago

mikhailfranco

A funny false or convergent etymology - shire reeve not sharif.

Here's another false trail from a real conversation:

  Q: What US state's name comes from the title of an Arabic ruler?

  A: Al Abama?
Of course, the correct answer is California from Khalifa transliterated through a Spanish novel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Las_Se...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia

6 months ago

ajmurmann

Don't most European languages use Landis loan words from both Latin and Greek? Both used to be taught in classical education.

6 months ago

laurent_du

What makes you think it was the English? I am pretty sure it comes from continental Europe.

6 months ago

cgio

Latin is lemniscus, so someday Latin people were like “let’s use Greek”

6 months ago

dmurray

Latin writers have been like "let's use Greek" at least since Virgil, so modern writers can be excused for getting their roots mixed up.

6 months ago

saghm

It's so evil that it defies spelling

6 months ago

brookst

Even the word has evil twins

6 months ago

dotancohen

I understand the confusion. Lemons smell good. The second root, on the other hand, far less pleasant.

6 months ago

Netcob

Not to be confused with the "lemonscape", a hallucinated world you enter when you've eaten too many lemons.

6 months ago

mst

Having that shape become more important to a civilisation than the circle because it has something to do with the geometry of hyperspace seems like it could be an interesting conceit for a sci-fi setting.

6 months ago

pavel_lishin

The Anvil of the Stars, by Greg Bear, featured a race of aliens whose mathematics weren't based on integers.

6 months ago

mst

This somehow reminds me of Egyptian mathematics where they refused to admit to the existence of any fraction with a numerator other than 1 (except for 2/3).

Learning how to expand e.g. 3/7 into 1/n + 1/m + ... using their methods was a fascinating experience.

I wouldn't want to suffer under such constraints day to day but it was one of the most memorable parts of the History of Mathematics course I took alongside what was other a mostly pure maths degree.

6 months ago

tibbetts

Sounds like a Greg Egan writing prompt.

6 months ago

dmd

Baez and Egan are close friends, so don’t be surprised if you see it pop up.

6 months ago

mst

Egan would probably be my first thought of somebody who could take a concept like that and make something well worth reading out of it.

Second thought would probably be Derek Künsken. (no claim he's necessarily the second best option but he's definitely the second author I've read recently enough to have the name of in brain cache to come to mind as "could almost certainly pull it off")

6 months ago

szundi

People just prompt themselves

6 months ago

TuringTest

Bob Shaw's Night Walk has something like that as a major plot point.

It's not aliens but humans, and it's not an 8-loop geometry, but without spoiling it too much it's safe to say that discovering how hyperspace works is the central concept guiding the story.

6 months ago

mst

Kindle Edition: £2.99

Sounds like at least £2.99's worth of fun to me from the blurb, so it's now queued up.

I swear I'll get to it eventually.

... honest.

6 months ago

antonvs

[flagged]

6 months ago

dang

Please don't do this here.

6 months ago

antonvs

Can you really call yourself a hacker if you’ve never spelled 80085 on a calculator?

6 months ago

bowsamic

[flagged]

6 months ago

dang

Lots of things are right.

6 months ago

sundarurfriend

[flagged]

6 months ago

sapphicsnail

If I saw ϖ in the wild I would have assumed it was an omega (ω) with a macron over it. Makes me wonder how many more varient Greek letters are out there.

6 months ago

wombatpm

Ancient, Ancient Greek had three additional letters: an F like character, a double lambda character, and P sounding character that looked like a lollipop. In case you need some additional symbols

6 months ago

perihelions

I guess these are the letters?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets

Ϝ Digamma

Ͱ Heta

Ϻ San

Ϙ Koppa

Ͷ Tsan, Digamma

Ͳ Sampi

6 months ago

rsynnott

Considerate of them; very helpful for future mathematicians.

6 months ago

Pinus

Any actual Greeks around here? I always wondered what π looks like when jotted down in, say, a shopping list...

6 months ago

xico

This is actually a normal manuscript π as taught in Greek school. See https://www.typotheque.com/articles/modern-handwriting-a-his...

6 months ago

nuancebydefault

As psted now and then on HN:our alphabet has a variant as well: ampersand (per se: and).

6 months ago

divbzero

The Fourier transform is composed of trigonometric sines and cosines.

There must be an analogous transform composed of lemniscate sines and cosines?

6 months ago

ttoinou

You could try to make a transform based on a sum of lemniscates in the complex plane

6 months ago

efortis

Infinity symbol with Lissajous curve:

x = Asin(at + delta)

y = Bsin(bt)

https://ericfortis.github.io/lissajous/?preset=Infinity

6 months ago

jan_g

Interesting! I can see it in two ways: (1) as elongated U-shaped ellipsis that rotates sideways and (2) as bent lemniscate that rotates vertically.

6 months ago

ComputerGuru

The post mentions that ϖ is called “varpi”; I just wanted to add that this is actually short for “variant of pi”, also known as an “archaic form of pi” from old Greek writing.

6 months ago

flatline

I read it as “omega-bar.”

6 months ago

thoughtcritical

"figure of eight" curves .... perhaps the simplest is the lemniscate of Gerono, which has the parametrization:

x = cos(t); y = sin(2t) / 2; and looks like this:

Lemniscate of Gerono animation https://i.sstatic.net/VKBgs.gif

However, the lemniscate of Bernoulli may be visually more pleasing; it has a parametrization very similar to the lemniscate of Gerono, except that both axes are scaled by a factor of 1/(sin(t)^2 + 1) = 2/(3 - cos(2t)):

scale = 2 / (3 - cos(2t)); x = scale cos(t); y = scale * sin(2*t) / 2; It looks like this:

Lemniscate of Bernoulli animation https://i.sstatic.net/nOPMx.gif

per: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/43691/how-can-i-...

6 months ago

big-green-man

You just blew my mind. I'm taking a dive on this.

6 months ago

whamlastxmas

Wish people wouldn’t inject weird social jabs into stuff like this

6 months ago

kolbe

Just like advertising--if they have earned my attention by saying things I want to read, then they have the right to dilute its quality with whatever else they want, up until it net doesn't interest me anymore. In this case, the jab is tiny and the quality content is bountiful.

6 months ago

whamlastxmas

The author isn’t going to convince anyone or change anything with a random jab and it detracts from what they’re communicating

6 months ago

kolbe

Sounds like his problem

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

nthingtohide

Change pi to ϖ in this setup.

2022 - Non-Euclidean Doom: What happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159… https://youtu.be/_ZSFRWJCUY4?t=406

6 months ago

seba_dos1

Such a promising yet disappointing talk.

6 months ago

SubiculumCode

Is there an evil twin to the set of prime numbers?

6 months ago

OscarCunningham

There are the Lucky Numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_number. Generated by a variant of the Sieve of Eratosthenes, they're believed to have a similar distribution to the primes while not having similar multiplicative properties.

6 months ago

amai

The opposite of prime numbers are

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number

But I'm not sure if these ones are evil.

6 months ago

fisian

There are the anti prime numbers (also called highly composite numbers).

6 months ago

block_dagger

Every even number?

6 months ago

ralusek

2?

6 months ago

pwdisswordfishz

Well, this one is pretty evil as prime numbers go.

6 months ago

sourcepluck

> This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'leminscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the leminiscate in my next post.

I think others have commented, but this three-way spelling certainly got a chuckle from me.

6 months ago

mettamage

So are there an infinite amount of constants like this? In terms of pi, e and this number?

Just wondering, there are an infinite number of shapes I suppose? But does that mean there is an infinite amount of constants?

6 months ago

dwaltrip

There are infinite integers [1]. So even if we just look at basic polygons — shapes formed by connecting some (integer) number of points with straight lines — we easily get infinite shapes.

Math is crazy. The universe is crazy. Happy holidays!

———

[1] At least, that’s what they tell us… :p

6 months ago

Morizero

Is there an abstraction of a leminscate/consonant with 3+ center points?

6 months ago

fisian

Yes, the Lissajous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve which also can be turned vertical (to look like an 8 instead of ∞).

6 months ago

mandarax8

But this doesnt have the property that the product of the distances to the focal points is constant no?

6 months ago

mandarax8

Heres two examples for 3 and 6 points in 2D, 3D respectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini_oval#Generalizations

These are symmetric as well though.

6 months ago

marginalia_nu

Kinda looking like hydrogen orbitals.

6 months ago

AlecBG

The lemniscate really looks like a homoclinic orbit in a 2d dynamics problem

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

BearOso

I thought it might be e. e is often used to model unbounded growth, so it's chaotic, while pi is harmonic.

Plus, evil starts with 'e', so why not.

"Laugh with me Jocko!" "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

6 months ago

anyfoo

Can’t have harmonics (i.e. harmonic oscillations, or any oscillations really) without e, though. sine and cosine are both sums of e, and if you look at the beauty of analytical sinusoid signals (which only have one component in the entire spectrum, lacking their negative frequency one) it’s just one exponential and nothing else.

6 months ago

cluckindan

Side by side, there is a clear parallel to monopolar and bipolar fields. Is this found in any version of Maxwell’s equations?

6 months ago

candlemas

>On our planet, it was Bernoulli, Euler and Gauss who discovered this math.

You don't say. Newton must have been sick that day.

6 months ago

avalys

I thought this was going to be about tau, which is not pi's evil twin, but rather, the One True Circle Constant.

https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto

6 months ago

ssalka

upvote for tau, the one really running the show while pi gets the fame & fortune

6 months ago

layer8

Is there something like ThreadReaderApp for Mastodon?

6 months ago

TomK32

Am I the only one who expected the evil twin to be 3 ?

6 months ago

incognito124

For some reason, I imagined a number where every digit of pi was transformed into a [9-digit] and that it has special properties. This one is more magical, though.

6 months ago

aap_

Wow, pomega is such a terrible name for it!

6 months ago

babbledabbler

Woah it even has a w for wa-pi-rio.

6 months ago

Bengalilol

mupi (mutant pi) or piet (pi evil twin) would be better names

6 months ago

Qem

Pizarro = Pi + Bizarro. Also there was an evil person that beared this name, Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador that kickstarted the genocide against the Incas. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Pizarro

6 months ago

waldrews

Seems like a fine number, but I bet there's quite a few more irrational computable numbers out there.

6 months ago

nektro

how close is ϖ to e?

6 months ago

notpushkin

> I'm not enough of a cultural relativist to believe there's a civilization that cares more about the shape ∞ than the shape ◯.

Rumor has it there is one civilization of lizard-people out there. One is in fact running a company here on Earth with this shape as a logo!

/s

6 months ago

kvdveer

You mean Arduino is ran by the Illuminate?

6 months ago

notpushkin

dun-dun-dunnn!

But I was actually alluding to Meta and the memes about Mark Zuckerberg being a lizard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiudBq7z8wk

6 months ago

ta988

yes you can blink leds

6 months ago

bnetd

[flagged]

6 months ago

doffen

[flagged]

6 months ago

mnsc

Curiously that made the thread better for me and the author's opinion about Twitter is exactly as true as the opposite opinion, that it is now the unfiltered source of objective truth. Or do you believe your opinions on the threads value or twitters reputation is special?

6 months ago

veltas

I also found it extremely helpful that the author virtue signalled to agree with me, so I know whether I am supposed to like it or not.

6 months ago

pera

What's more likely: (i) famous mathematician expressing his frustration regarding how his previous internet community is now full of Nazis, or (ii) famous mathematician casually saying Nazis suck so to be perceived as morally superior by some random readers?

To me the second option is an extremely bizarre take and I cannot imagine why anyone would even consider it.

6 months ago

mnsc

Interpretation 1 is more likely and made the dry mathematician more relatable/human which made the writing better imo.

6 months ago

nthingtohide

> Hence neither a man's contemporaries nor the man himself can form any final estimate of him or of his fitting position, because their knowledge is too imperfect. History often reverses the decision of contemporaries.

Probably true about Elon.

6 months ago

I_complete_me

But I think mainly in the direction of demotion. Offhand I can't think of examples of someone ... oh, wait Van Gogh.

6 months ago

nthingtohide

Baruch Spinoza is another. He was excommunicated.

6 months ago

[deleted]
6 months ago

rsynnott

It’s a metaphor (ironically originating _on_ Twitter, not _about_ Twitter, pre-Musk); essentially, once you allow Nazis in a bar, they metastasize, and pretty soon you’re a Nazi bar. It’s perfectly applicable to the current state of twitter.

6 months ago

gosub100

what metaphor was it called back when they allowed far-left hate speech but censored, shadow-banned or otherwise slowed stories that their secret thought-control departments didn't like? what would you call that?

6 months ago

xigoi

Twitter already contained a lot of hateful speech before Elon acquired it.

6 months ago

lern_too_spel

Those tweets would typically be demoted instead of promoted.

6 months ago

veltas

I absolutely agree, a dead 1920's German nationalist movement is exactly why we shouldn't allow free speech online.

6 months ago

himgl

[flagged]

6 months ago

rsynnott

I was a Twitter user from 2007 to late 2022. That idiot wasted no time in ruining it; by Dec 2022 it was very clearly time to go.

6 months ago

nuancebydefault

Nobody uses twitter these days.

6 months ago

himgl

What a daft claim to make. A simple web search would have informed you that Twitter has over half a billion monthly active users.

6 months ago

nuancebydefault

Hmm you mean X right?

6 months ago

himgl

Same thing.

6 months ago

johnp314

Since it's an "evil twin" should we not expect to find it in an alleged Nazi bar?

6 months ago

mongol

Yes, that is when I stopped reading. I left Twitter recently, but I would not call it a Nazi bar. It is just not for me, any longer.

6 months ago

Johanx64

[flagged]

6 months ago

d_burfoot

[flagged]

6 months ago

ryanmcgarvey

Is it a political statement if it's also a statement of fact? Sure, the comment has some color to it, I'll concede that, but one can no longer post these kinds of things on Twitter and get the honest engagement from community members one used to. It's no longer a welcoming place for this kind of discussion.

6 months ago

BearOso

With no account, I can no longer read comment chains on Twitter. It will only show the direct comment linked to. If you go to the user's page, all you see are the promoted tweets. There's no way to access the timeline sequentially anymore.

With those restrictions, you're writing only to a captive audience if you post on Twitter.

So you are technically correct, you literally cannot post these things on Twitter.

6 months ago

foogazi

> Why does this guy think it's acceptable to bitterly insult so many people,

Won’t someone think of the people?

My mom is on X - I don’t see how that offhand remark insults her

> I think HN should have a policy for submitted content that is along the lines of the policies in place for comments

We can already flag and vote - what more censorship do you want ?

6 months ago

veltas

[flagged]

6 months ago

yason

[flagged]

6 months ago

pwdisswordfishz

Same here. I have to install a userscript to restore usable scrolling:

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name     Mastodon: don't fucking hijack the keyboard
    // @grant    none
    // @match    https://hachyderm.io/*
    // @match    https://mastodon.social/*
    // @match    https://mamot.fr/*
    // @match    https://queer.party/*
    // @match    https://social.treehouse.systems/*
    // @match    https://infosec.exchange/*
    // @match    https://jawns.club/*
    // @match    https://mastodon.gamedev.place/*
    // @match    https://mathstodon.xyz/*
    // @run-at   document-start
    // ==/UserScript==

    window.addEventListener('keydown', ev => ev.stopPropagation(), true);
    window.addEventListener('keyup', ev => ev.stopPropagation(), true);
6 months ago

NoboruWataya

> Up/down arrows jump to the next post and page up/down isn't too helpful for reading.

I didn't experience this at all on Firefox, up/down and page up/down scrolled in the normal way.

6 months ago

davorak

The issue existed from me in both firefox and chrome. Click on outside columns will result in normal scroll. Click or highlight in the center column will result in the jumpy scroll that does not quite scroll one comment at a time with up/down arrow.

6 months ago

RobotToaster

It kinda happens to me on firefox, one press of the down arrow scrolls so "Here's a formula for the lemniscate in polar coordinates" in the first reply is at the top of the screen, not helpful.

6 months ago

kuschkufan

here's a nickel, get a new browser.

no idea why i even go for bait like this. because i like doing unpaid support work i guess. i tested in firefox and chrome. both work fine and don't do it like op decribes - no keybinds, keys behave normal.

maybe one of the dudes from yesterdays thread that had his own chatgpt programmed browser extensions installed that break the web for him.

6 months ago

BeetleB

I follow John on Mastodon. He never fails to disappoint.

6 months ago

hinkley

Then why do you follow him?

6 months ago

barrell

Oddly enough, “never fails to disappoint” can have the meaning “never disappoints” as well as “routinely disappoints”. I’ve never thought about that one before

6 months ago

heresie-dabord

Native EN parser here. I would never consider this usage correct except as a rhetorical (facetious) insult. People may well repeat it without understanding the original nor their mistake. Although if enough people bust the syntax, it may attract descriptivist reporting, as with the widely observed malapropism "irregardless".

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/139448/never-fai...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless

6 months ago

barrell

It’s not a matter of correctness, but of understanding. OP definitely intended to imply the content does not disappoint, and used a colloquialism most native speakers would understand

6 months ago

slippy

I am a native speaker and got the gist and saw the paradox, and found the phrasing a bit tortured by the triple negative. Thank you for explaining that this was a colloquialism. Now I have to go look up the etymology... And upon further inspection, this usage is actually a misnegation.

"It is a veiled insult: an ironic form of insult delivery which is misinterpreted as flattery to the buffoon who is targeted by it, much to the entertainment of anyone else within earshot who understands the true meaning."

6 months ago

hinkley

Only in the same sense that “could care less” is understandable but also means the opposite of the intention.

6 months ago

ftmch

There are East European languages, mostly Slavic ones, that have these weird double negatives which are grammatically correct and mean the opposite. A sentance such as: "I haven't never been there" means you've never been there.

6 months ago

hinkley

I have only ever heard it used as a high brow burn, and a wickedly hard one at that.

6 months ago

kazinator

I've never failed to win a game of mahjong against a bunch of grannies a Chinatown back room joint.

I've never tried such a thing; therefore, I've never failed.

6 months ago

scubbo

Frankly, I could care less

6 months ago

Agingcoder

This is the first time I come across this mistake / non-mistake so I misunderstood your comment. Are you sure it’s a common enough misnegation for people to understand what you meant ?

6 months ago

barrell

I didn’t use the expression, I don’t think I would have myself, but it didn’t even strike me as odd until I read the comment by hinkley. Did you read the original comment and think BeetleB follows John and thinks all of his content is disappointing?

6 months ago

jrmann100

Here's a StackExchange thread on this exact mix-up (a "misnegation"):

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/139448/never-fai...

6 months ago

jacknews

Never heard that one, but maybe it's like 'could care less', which has acquired the opposite of it's actual meaning (the phrase should be 'could not care less') by repeated incorrect use.

6 months ago

hinkley

I’d say that’s more tolerated than embraced. We know what you meant, you just didn’t say what you meant. Not everyone tolerates it.

6 months ago

reshlo

> can have the meaning “never disappoints”

How?

6 months ago

kazinator

A complete stranger who has nothing whatsoever to do with you, who has never tried to do anything for you, nor has been expected to, has never disappointed you. They've also never failed to disappoint you, because they have not failed in any regard whatsoever.

This is an example of a vacuous truth.

I've never failed an airliner landing. While that may sound like I'm boasting of being a good pilot, in fact I'm not a pilot at all, and I've never attempted such a thing.

Another vacuous truth.

Every crow in an empty set of crows is white.

Also, every crow in an empty set of crows is black.

Propositions universally quantified over an empty set are all vacuously true.

Statements with always and never are universally quantified over some set of events. If that set is empty it leads to vacuous truths.

"Every time I've seen a crow, it has always been white" is vacuously true if I've never seen a crow. I.e. the set of crows I've seen is empty, and consequently is a true statement that they're all white.

6 months ago

reshlo

> A complete stranger who has nothing whatsoever to do with you, who has never tried to do anything for you, nor has been expected to, has never disappointed you. They've also never failed to disappoint you, because they have not failed in any regard whatsoever.

Nobody who uses the phrase ever means it in this way. The point of using the statement is to convey that you are familiar with the person’s history.

As another commenter has already pointed out, “has never failed to disappoint” is not the same statement as “never fails to disappoint”. The habitual present can’t refer to empty sets, as it is only used to refer to repeated actions.

6 months ago

kazinator

> Nobody who uses the phrase ever means it in this way.

That is true. Outside of formal logic situations, deliberately uttered vacuous truths are only ever used by nerds to be clever, or for sarcasm, or insult and such.

Someone habitually using "never fails to disappoint" intended as a compliment has somehow latched onto an incorrect idiom; they likely intend something slightly funny like "never manages to disappoint" (tries hard to disappoint, but never does, due to being so good!). Or maybe it's supposed to be a deliberately funny mixup of "never fails" and "never disappoints".

6 months ago

seba_dos1

> A complete stranger who has nothing whatsoever to do with you, who has never tried to do anything for you, nor has been expected to, has never disappointed you. They've also never failed to disappoint you, because they have not failed in any regard whatsoever.

"never failed" != "never fails"

6 months ago

nuancebydefault

They said they were a follower of them though.

6 months ago

barrell

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ linguistic drift. Technically it means you routinely disappoint, but it’s often used idiomatically to mean the opposite

6 months ago

ykonstant

What a country!

6 months ago

BeetleB

Heh. This comment blew up on me. Yes, it was a typo.

6 months ago
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