In Ben Sparks’ video he shows a very interesting trick. On a decimal angle calculator run:
sin(1/5555)
If your calculator has more than the standard Ubuntu calculator’s digits of accuracy you could add even more repeating 5’s. The answer is approximately PI with extra zeros…
0.000003142
Since today is Twosday (2-22-2022 in any date format), here is a similar Tuesday math trick for the Python console:
from math import sin
sin(22/700000.0)
It is also .0003142… or approximately Pi!
Watch Ben Sparks’ video for a more detailed explanation and scroll down for spoilers…
(spoiler alert – below)
You may notice that the difference with the two above “tricks” is that the one Ben Sparks gives is the fraction 0.000000018000… repeating, which is approximately a small decimal fraction of pi (with 180 degrees being Pi in degrees). Pi radians, equivalently, can be expressed as approximately 22/7. The trick is equivalent for 1/100000th of a pi, for calculators (and programming languages) that use radian measures.