3.14159265358979… Yes, it’s a number that needs no introduction. Over the years, Pi has become a competition object, not only for memorizing its digits, but also for evaluating performance. However, what we have here today might be the best visualization of Pi, thanks to an animation that forms a beautiful pattern.
The world record for memorizing digits of Pi is held by the Chinese Lu Chao, who in 2005 recited 67,890 digits. I imagine this man has no problem remembering his passwords, but the truth is that most of us (obviously including me) cannot even visualize such a quantity of numbers. So… how to visualize Pi? The most frequent technique is, without a doubt, rounding to make it shorter. “3.1416”. Scientifically imprecise, but “sufficient” in most applications.
Others have tried to play a bit with the irrationality of Pi: Carl Sagan suggests in his novel “Contact” that the creator of the Universe hid a message in its digits (sorry for the spoiler, but the novel is 29 years old). It has also been used in songs, and even in some schools in the United States, March 14 (3/14 if you flip the month) is celebrated as “Pi Day”.
Rows of numbers, hidden messages, celebrations, songs and competitions. Not bad at all for “the relationship between the circumference and its diameter”. Still, Cristian Vasile decided to create something more related to Pi. His visualization divides a circle into ten identical segments, numbered from 0 to 9 and following the clockwise direction. The animation starts at 3, and a line is drawn to 1. From there, another line goes to 4, back to 1, a new line to 5, then to 9... and with that you have an idea of its mechanism.
The result, from an aesthetic point of view, is spectacular. Those who are more related to the world of mathematics and believe that these “visualizations” are actually “artistic interpretations” of a random number, well... they are right, but we must not be blind to the beauty.
This is not the first visualization of Pi, and it won’t be the last. Other relevant numbers have been represented in the same way, such as the golden ratio or Phi. If you want to learn more about other visual variants of Pi, don’t miss playing the second video, created by the people at Numberphile, which also mentions Vasile’s work.
Once again: All visualizations of Pi try to help us understand a little more the “randomness” of this magnificent number, and explore a definitely artistic vein, instead of pursuing some fundamental mathematical truth. And of course, printed copies can be purchased of the pattern, starting at $32 on the official site.
https://old.neoteo.com/la-sucesion-de-fibonacci-en-la-naturaleza/
