That’s a dumb way of teaching and you are a dumb devils advocate for saying it. Go to H E double hockey sticks.
Comment on Let π = 5
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To be Devil’s Advocate:
Given that the rest written in Comic Sans, it may be an early elementary school exercise, aimed at teaching kids to do multiplications. In this case, it’s tolerable and/or defensible to find a simplification for pi.
That said, making pi equal to 3 would have been more accurate for that…
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Papergeist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Even in engineering it is common to just round pi to 3 and quickly estimate whatever it is your doing.
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 2 months ago
In astronomy, pi=10. Because when you’re trying to estimate distances measured in millions of light years, the difference between 3 and 10 is just one or two orders of magnitude on a small number. It’s pretty common for astronomers to do napkin math by rounding every single number to the nearest zero. 91k becomes 100k for instance. Because the napkin math estimations are just trying to gauge whether some celestial event or object is a thousand light years away, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, etc… And pi becomes 10, because that’s the nearest round number.
LazerFX@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Fermi Estimation. Where you’re dealing with something so big, you’re just interested in the magnitude.
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“About yay big.”
maniclucky@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Excuse me what? I’ve been an engineer for a decade and have never met anyone that would do that. We have calculators.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think they mean napkin math. Like you’re in a meeting and they ask for a general idea if something will work or not
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
I feel like a proper engineer would call only going two places past the decimal “rounding pie”.
GladiusB@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I need a new maitre’d for a restaurant I am opening. How busy are you?
bluewing@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Or it’s from an ME. They seldom can remember the rounded value of Pi, but they’re pretty sure it’s somewhere between 3 and 4. But you probably should use 5 just to be safe…
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Unless the kid is even slightly above average and finds the idea that pi equaling 5 confusing.
NucleusAdumbens@lemmy.world 2 months ago
…if they’re above average, I think they’ll figure out the explicitly defined variable. I think the instructor is trying to make sure this problem doesn’t require a calculator and figured defining pi as 5 makes it clear that you can treat it as a whole number. 3 would be more accurate and just as easy, but meh idk that this is that great of a blunder.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You can be a smart kid and not realize that adults are lying.
I remember the Peas and the Punnett Square. Sure, mendelian genetics explains pea plant colors, but doesn’t explain dog fur colors. Just providing a footnote that more completed genetics exists would have been nice.