Pi Quotes (7 quotes)
De Morgan was explaining to an actuary what was the chance that a certain proportion of some group of people would at the end of a given time be alive; and quoted the actuarial formula, involving p [pi], which, in answer to a question, he explained stood for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. His acquaintance, who had so far listened to the explanation with interest, interrupted him and exclaimed, 'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'
Mathematical Recreations and Problems (1896), 180; See also De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes (1872), 172.
If pi wasnt around, there would be no round pies!
Recalling his own comment made at age 10, used as an epigraph in In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday Questions (2016), 11.
It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.
...
The Biblical value of pi, by comparison, is exactly three, as is clear from a verse in 1 Kings vii 23: 'and he made a molten sea, ten cubits from brim to brim, and his height was five cubit; and a line of thirty cubits did encompass him round about.'
— Eli Maor
From To Infinity and Beyond (1991), 4.
This mysterious 3.141592..., which comes in at every door and window, and down every chimney.
What good your beautiful proof on [the transcendence of] π? Why investigate such problems, given that irrational numbers do not even exist?
[As a youth, fiddling in my home laboratory] I discovered a formula for the frequency of a resonant circuit which was 2π x sqrt(LC) where L is the inductance and C the capacitance of the circuit. And there was π, and where was the circle?
I still dont quite know where that circle is, where that π comes from.
From address to the National Science Teachers Association convention (Apr 1966), 'What Is Science?', collected in Richard Phillips Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins (ed.), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (1999, 2005), 177.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
