I just woke up and my bleary brain completely slid over the irrational constraint. Apologies. On Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 8:29 AM Mike Speciner <ms@alum.mit.edu wrote:
They're not exactly irrational.
On 28-Dec-18 08:19, Allan Wechsler wrote:
Nobody ever lists 0 or 1 as candidates in these discussions!
On Dec 28, 2018 6:22 AM, "Simon Plouffe" <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello, the 3 most important constants are
the golden ratio, 1.6180339887... or 1/2*sqrt(5)/2. the number Pi, 3.141592... the e constant (exp of 1). 2.71828182845904523536...
which one is the most important may vary according to who is saying it.
Golden ratio : most plants have pattern in their shape and count of leaves, petal or form, it has been said that 95 % of plants have this pattern. just type <golden ratio and plants > on youtube, you will see a couple of films explaining this phenomena.
Pi : because the number appear in so many mathematical and physical formulas. There are a lot of them. Open a math book, any math book, a large proportion of math books have always one to many formulas linked to that number. It also appears in important formulas : - the general relativity Einstein formula contains Pi. - see wikipedia page on Pi for that.
Exp(1) : because the number e is THE constant that gives the solution to all differential equations with constant coefficients. Since ln(e) = 1, also because many of those solutions can be expressed by a linear combination of exp(1) terms.
In all of these 3 cases, you can find a large literature covering it.
So it is perhaps a matter of opinion.
For me : Pi is the most important.
Best regards, Simon Plouffe
Le 2018-12-28 à 11:36, D J Makin via math-fun a écrit :
Hi all, I don’t normally start a conversation on here basically due to my lack of formal higher math education and a very specific limited math-related skill set, however this is a question that is really just about mathematical preference rather than math itself. I'm writing with the holiday spirit in mind, posing the following question just for pure fun and hoping it won’t cause too much divisive argument ! What is the most important strictly irrational constant ? #pi or #e or sqrt(2) or maybe something else ? (Not including infinity)
As a programmer I find it very hard to choose :D (Apologies to those who prefer the term software engineer)
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