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More likely a mathematician would correct you instead of crying. Pi is not infinite, its decimal expansion is infinite!
Plus even that isn’t enough: 10/3 has an infinite decimal expansion (in base 10 at least) too, but if π = 10/3, you’d be able to find exact circumferences. Its irrationality is what makes it relevant to this joke.
A mathematician is also perfectly happy with answers like “4π” as exact.
Plus what’s to stop you from having a rational circumference but irrational radius?
Writing this, I feel like I might have accidentally proved your point.
Mathematicians taking a physics class and being told they have to round things. That’s when the tears start flowing.
Its decimal expansion is finite in the base pi.
1?
No 10. 1 is the same number in any base.
In my experience, 1 is equivalent with 1’s in other base… this particularly applies for base-ball
Easy. Take a wire that is exactly 1 meter long. Form a circle from the wire. The circumference of that circle is 1 meter.
“exactly”
uh huh. and how are you measuring that?
You don’t need to, it’s defined. (Lol). If you take a circle with a circumference of 1, then its circumference will be 1… I think I might have lost some braincells reading this.
Now the engineers and/or scientists are crying
Also
That approach works for area but not for perimeter, because cutting off the corners gives you a shape whose area is closer to the circle’s, but it doesn’t change the perimeter at all.
Not true. If you define the circumference in terms of pi, you can define the circumference exactly.
“Find” not “define”
Putting things in base 10 is also a definition. Digits aren’t special.
Was going to say the same. Also π isn’t infinite. Far from it. it’s not even bigger than 4. It’s representation in the decimal system is just so that it can’t be written there with a finite number of decimal places. But you could just write “π”. It’s short, concise and exact.
And by that definition 0.1 is also infinite… My computer can’t write that with a finite amount of digits in base 2, which it uses internally.
So… I’m crying salty tears, too.
[Edit: And we don’t even need transcendental numbers or other number systems. A third also doesn’t have a representation. So again following the logic… you can divide a cake into 5 pieces, but never into 3?!]
Not sure where you’re going with the decimal thing. Pi had infinite digits in any integer base because it’s irrational.
