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Let's hear it for spokey dokeys on EV's.

If I could even spell "pi" I might have got my maths O level.

When I see SLOW HORSES I always think ah, so this is where the ones I bet on are kept...

Cones on AVs might be even safer... https://slate.com/business/2023/07/autonomous-vehicles-traffic-cones-san...

From memory: 3.1415927 - as much as my teenage Casio calculator would display. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

When I see SLOW HORSES I always think ah, so this is where the ones I bet on are kept...

I think of the excellent books by Mick Herron (and now excellent series on Apple TV - or so I am told as I haven't watched it).[

David9694 wrote:

From memory: 3.1415927 - as much as my teenage Casio calculator would display. 

Nobody was more surprised than I when I scraped a C at O level maths, but two things stuck with me, Pythagoras' theorem and pi to fourteen places thanks to having the following sentence drummed into me by the maths master: "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics." 

Steve K wrote:

I think of the excellent books by Mick Herron (and now excellent series on Apple TV - or so I am told as I haven't watched it).

Not come across those, noted for my next library visit! The other thing that particular sign always makes me think of is the incomparable Tom Waits and the line from Jitterbug Boy, later used as a title for a compilation album, "It's fast women, slow horses..."

How useful is the fourteenth decimal place of pi? Well, the thirteenth and fourteenth digits are 7 and 9, so you could drop the fourteenth and round the thirteenth up to 8. Doing so would result in a rounding error that, when calculating a circle the size of the equator, of about 0.12 nanometres - less than the diameter of some atoms.
Hardly worth the effort of drumming into any child's head, but hopefully Pythagoras' theorem comes in handy from time to time.

ChurchillR wrote:

How useful is the fourteenth decimal place of pi? Well, the thirteenth and fourteenth digits are 7 and 9, so you could drop the fourteenth and round the thirteenth up to 8. Doing so would result in a rounding error that, when calculating a circle the size of the equator, of about 0.12 nanometres - less than the diameter of some atoms. Hardly worth the effort of drumming into any child's head, but hopefully Pythagoras' theorem comes in handy from time to time.

Why π^π^π^π could be an integer (for all we know!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHFLfv-ThQ

Pie to the pie to the pie to the pie?

Is that like one of them turduckens, but with pastry?

mdavidford wrote:

Pie to the pie to the pie to the pie?

Is that like one of them turduckens, but with pastry?

I think we'll need some kind of chart for this

hawkinspeter wrote:

mdavidford wrote:

Pie to the pie to the pie to the pie?

Is that like one of them turduckens, but with pastry?

I think we'll need some kind of chart for this

In a similar vein, a bar chart of how much of the door I've painted.

Of more interest is the scatter chart showing how much of the floor you've painted.

hawkinspeter wrote:

 

I think we'll need some kind of chart for this

The Guardian do a nice line in Venn Diagrams.

hawkinspeter wrote:

mdavidford wrote:

Pie to the pie to the pie to the pie?

Is that like one of them turduckens, but with pastry?

I think we'll need some kind of chart for this

Dad joke:

andystow wrote:

brooksby wrote:

Latest Private Eye:

Some kind of ratchet in that hub? It doesn't look like he can even push the pedal all the way to horizontal.

Ah - yes, they've got an American Star the wrong way round (means the child carrier needs rearranged though).  Or it could be a Facile but inverted?

Any one who knows Pi to 26 decimal places will have that off in 10 seconds.

I assumed it would be a large number and its prime factors.

David9694 wrote:

When you cycle to the Mathematics Faculty. 

But apparently don't have the nous to lock your bike to the concrete-embedded metal post and just lock through the back wheel?

Rendel Harris wrote:

David9694 wrote:

When you cycle to the Mathematics Faculty. 

But apparently don't have the nous to lock your bike to the concrete-embedded metal post and just lock through the back wheel?

You'd be wanting the Topology Department

He needs to get that rack bolt replaced too. 

David9694 wrote:

New leadership self-help book out from the Evil Cycling Lobby

https://penguin.jos.ht/

I'm about halfway through 'Roads were not built for cars', and I hadn't realised how early on history, opinions, and the built environment were edited to create motonormativity.

Yup.  The more digging I've done the more the story changes from just "the market offered what people were calling for and they eagerly bought into it".  Just like the invention of jaywalking or the massive expansion of semi-trucks and "SUVs" (and auto-outrages like the leaded petrol scandals) this is more a tale of conscience-free marketing, corporate lobbying, tax dodging and rule circumventing, political machinations and ultimately the quest for power and vast accumulations of money.  (Gets even more murky when you throw in the important driver of the military-industrial complex).

Of course we are all "to blame" also - for all kinds of reasons beyond just their utility for transport people do want what motor vehicles now provide.

Stockholm Syndrome, between people and their cars, one of the American commentators was saying on X Twitter today. Active travel must be such a very lonely path to tread over there. 

You have to solve the Bonnie & Clyde problem to get people to give up their cars, "the I will, if you will" conundrum.  Let's see if I can remember - Bonnie & Clyde stole a car and used it to rob a bank. Police are holding them in separate cells.  Everyone knows the jail terms.

The police have enough evidence to convict both of them for the car theft - that's a jail term of 5 years each. The penalty for the robbery is 15 years each, but the police will need a confession from one or both parties as they don't have enough evidence.  However, if one informs on the other (who stays silent) the reward is that person goes free and the other one gets 20 years in jail. 

Put another way, everyone in the country lives in town A and they all work at factory B 10 miles away.  The bus service is pretty good and takes 20 minutes.

10% of the workers decide to get cars, which halves the journey time for them. Another 10% see this and also get cars - it's a little more than 10 minutes, but still better than the bus. Another 10% get cars and the bus timetable is amended to take 25 minutes and is slightly less frequent. Another 10% make the shift to cars - it's quicker for them than the bus. 

When we get to the 50% mark, the car journey is now 20 minutes - older workers remember the bus used to take this amount of time. But the bus is nudging half an hour these days, so another 10% get cars. Older workers again remark that it's all very well, but everyone used to get to work in 20 minutes back in the day, and that even the drivers cannot match this now.  But that memory has long faded.