Math Skills Come in Handy
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James Joyner | Wednesday, May 9, 2007 |
Another nail in the coffin of the idea that all math beyond arithmetic is useless unless you’re an engineer: free pizza for those who can do geometry in their heads.
That, sadly, leaves me out. There was a time when I could multiply double digit numbers not ending in zero by 3.14 in my head and the like but they are long gone.
via Chaz Hill
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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"Three and a bit" is an excellent approximation of pi for mental approximations. 3.0 is wrong by less than 5%, and you can fudge that by rounding up somewhere else in your calculation.
I had something figured out for Domino's years ago, where they stated that 2 smalls were more than 1 large. (I think the small was a 10 inch and the large was a 14 inch). Technically they were right, but if you assume 1 inch crust (without topping) around the edge of the pizza you got more surface area of toppings with the large, than with the two small. Of course what you really need to know is the weight or volume of the pizza material to do a good comparison as pizzas aren't really just 2 dimensional. That about cover it?
I thought so.
;)
There was a time when I could multiply double digit numbers not ending in zero by 3.14 in my head and the like but they are long gone.
The effects of too much pizza, over the years?
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