Cup of Coffee

March 14, 2016: Did Somebody Say Pi?

81 Comments

Unrelated: yesterday is the day it started being seriously difficult to have my wife and kids so far away. Still waiting to hear about two different jobs for her.

81 thoughts on “March 14, 2016: Did Somebody Say Pi?”

    1. I have had numerous FB friends recently link to an article about Jimmy Carter from 2009 as it if was new, too.

    1. Ugh, frickin tech billionaires.

      Even when the Wolves get nice things, they're not allowed to have nice things.

    1. 3.14159 is as far as I can recite pi, generally, but that will probably sufficiently narrow the margin of error for any calculations and practical application I'd be making.

    2. I'm reminding them that 3.14159 also rounds to 3.142 and it's all freakin' arbitrary, just eat your dang pie like every other day of the year you don't need an excuse get off my lawn!

      1. Heck, it rounds to 3. Or zero, if you're looking at the 10's place. Zero? There is no pie? Not after I get through with it!

    3. I like having unnecessarily precise numbers, sometimes. While in Germany, I spent more time than I should have trying to mentally divide the 500ml in my Coke by the listed 16.9oz and using that 29.59 or so into other fluids.

      I also like not being metric-ignorant. The other day a lady at the office was oversharing about the growths on her liver and how 8cm "didn't sound like much, you know." My immediate response: "That's like 3-inches!" At 2.54 cm/inch, it's 3.1496-something.

      1. I like having unnecessarily precise numbers, sometimes.
        Yes! Do you own a kitchen scale? I think you'd like it.

        I also like not being metric-ignorant.
        Yes to this as well! Thanks to knitting, I will always know that 4 inches = 10 centimeters.

      2. I wouldn't say I'm metric-ignorant, but I'm one of the (seemingly vanishing number) of imperial system freethinkers. Going to culinary school pretty firmly convinced me of the superiority of the imperial system.

          1. Dividing by three is a very useful mental tool in a kitchen. The brain struggles to mentally scale by powers of ten. The scientific precision of metric measurements over imperial volumetric measures is wasted outside baking or charcuterie, where measuring by weight in imperial is just as easy as metric.

            Pounds and ounces more comprehensibly correspond to portion sizes a human could reasonably eat or drink in a sitting without getting into ridiculous numbers. When was the last time you: Ate a 113 gram hamburger? Drank 117 ml of wine? Made a cocktail with 44 ml of bourbon?

            Non-kitchen imperial measures are more humanistic, ergonomic, and organic. Yes, the math may not seem as easy to manipulate as metric, but only because most people haven't internalized the ratios.

            Oddly enough, my second career involved a fair amount of hexadecimal.

            1. I kind of feel this way about distance too. Kilometers vs miles, whatever. But shorter distances, feet are quite handy in a way cm and m just aren't. I could get used to them, I suppose, but the math isn't worth the real worldness.

              1. The furlong might be my favorite, as it is based on a unit of human ( & animal) labor - plowing a furrow in a field. An acre is one furlong long and a tenth of a furlong wide. This human-scale measurement is preserved and in something as massive as the city plan of Chicago.

                1. 117 mL? 1000 mL is ~quart and 117 is pretty close to 1/8 of 1000, so 1/8 of a quart. A quart is 32 (fluid!) ounces so four ounces of wine. Verifying with Google says yes.

                  I find the number to be dumb regardless. AMR's point of 1 quart equaling 1 liter underlies that. Using the metric system doesn't mean we're suddenly going to be measuring with extra precision. We'll still round things to convenient numbers. Just like we currently do with the vagaries of measuring flour.

                  Finally, I'd order a 100 gram burger and it'd probably sell better.

          1. 3 tsp to 1 Tbsp; 16.2307 Tbsp to 1 c. What's not to love!!11!!!?

            (4.93ml to tsp., by the way.)

            1. It's exactly 16 Tbsp to 1 cup. I know this because I had to look it up yesterday when trying to convert Tbsp to cup.

              1. Not according to Google, which is...odd.

                Also, Imperial or US Customary? Wheeee!

            2. I'm hard pressed to think of a cooking situation in which I have only teaspoon, tablespoon, and 1 cup measuring scoops.

              1. Ya know, I've never thought of measurement this way. I totes appreciate this corner of the interwebs.

              2. When you've already used the fractions and don't want to wash them. Probably put something wet in them before measuring flour or confectioner's sugar, you dummy. (That is to me, not you.)

      3. The biggest metric system I have trouble conceptualizing is Celcius. I'm decent with cm or kg or litres.

        1. Agreed. Hmm...upon further review, a Celcius table for Minnesotans:

          40C = Record MN Heat (104F)
          30C = July (86F)
          20C = Indoor thermostat temp
          10C = October (avg) temps (50F)
          0C = Nice day in February (32F)
          -20C = Getting cold' eh? (-4F)
          -40C = -40F - Pretty Cold

          But I'm still going to do my baking at 350F

          2. Of all metric units I encounter with any frequency, I find Celcius least useful. 5.5C to 10F
            Something being in the teens C varies from light jacket to potential for shorts.

            Also, pounds are better than kilograms for a similar reason (though it's not as pronounced).
            And, conversely, miles are better than kilometers for a similar reasons. A mile is a good distance to walk, a km: not so much.

            1. Celsius is rubbish for measuring climate as experienced by humans because it's concerned with the boiling and freezing points of water instead of air temperature, which is a far better, more incremental gauge of how a human experiences the natural environment.

              1. Double-Celsius could work well, maybe even Double-Celsius plus 30. (100F = 106DCPT, 50F = 50 DCPT, Water freezes at 30DCPT, Absolute zero is -516DCPT).

                1. You do realize that double Celsius plus 30 is more-or-less the actual conversion formula?

  5. I turned in my resignation letter and sent in my offer acceptance for the new job, so everything is official now. Feels good.

    2. Very exciting. Will winding down/starting up be fairly seamless, or are the positions pretty different?

      Also, I hope to keep the good interview streak going tomorrow.

      1. The products are significantly different, but the role of the positions is nearly identical so it should be a pretty easy getting into the swing of the new job. I do have to learn a new 3D modeling program though, so that will be fun.

        Good luck on the interview, man.

        1. A friend of mine designed a 3-D imaging software product. He is very modest but if you get him talking, you find out he has his doctorate in engineering from an Ivy League school and his first customer was Boeing. He might be smart.

  6. The Twins made a bunch of cuts yesterday and today. I think it could be significant that Nick Burdi wasn't one of them. He would seem to be one of those guys that it would be real tempting to keep him in the bullpen, so if the Twins weren't serious about him competing for a job, I figured they would have cut him by now.

    1. He's the flame thrower, right? I really like that the Twins seem to be moving towards power arms and strike out type guys these days.

    2. Against maybe scrubs he impressed when when I was in FL. More movement than I was expecting.

    1. Knowing that spooky has an affinity for backwards hats, I so want that guy in the front row to be him.

    2. If you dont know the story behind this, the Vikings wanted to change the name of Chicago Ave to something else because they play the Chicago Bears.

      1. Did they offer to pay for the new signage? I'm guessing not. (It's a ridiculous request anyway, but expecting the city to foot the bill would be so typical.)

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