Comment on Let π = 5

• Papergeist@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Even in engineering it is common to just round pi to 3 and quickly estimate whatever it is your doing.

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  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

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    • LazerFX@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Fermi Estimation. Where you’re dealing with something so big, you’re just interested in the magnitude.

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  • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “About yay big.”

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  • maniclucky@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

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    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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

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      • Jimbo@yiffit.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        We all have phones with calculators, don’t really need to do napkin math anymore

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      • maniclucky@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I suppose. I’m still internally outraged and haven’t run into such a situation before, but I accept this.

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  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I feel like a proper engineer would call only going two places past the decimal “rounding pie”.

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• GladiusB@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I need a new maitre’d for a restaurant I am opening. How busy are you?

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  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not very, but I’ll require lots of pay.

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    • GladiusB@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How does 1 million a minute sound?

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      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Ill take it!

        I’ll give you the hardest 30 minutes I’ve worked in my life, and then retire.

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