Burgy,
Of course pi is not random at all. It is absolutely determined. But the
sequence of integers to any base passes all known tests for randomness.
Indeed, if a repeating decimal or other evident structure should appear,
the number would not be transcendental. The conclusion is that all
possible sequences of integers will be found if the computation is
carried far enough. From something that George noted, this must be true
of all transcendental numbers. But, so far as I know, only the decimal
value of pi has been calculated to ridiculous lengths. But someone may
have fooled around with e, the next best known, and I probably would not
have heard.
When I first encountered references to the nature of pi, a statement
which must be either true or false, but which was not empirically known
at the time, was 'There is a sequence of 3 3's in the decimal value of
pi.' This was upped to 5 5's and 7 7's that I heard about. But I have no
published evidence where the situation currently stands, though one
should find 9 9's somewhere within about a billion integers. Finding the
binary code for even a short program will likely take many more places. I
know I'm not going to look for Windows' code in pi.
Dave
On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:05:20 -0600 John W Burgeson <burgytwo@juno.com>
writes:
> BTW, I think that pi is not really random. It just looks that way.
> So
> perhaps Microsoft's OS is really not in there after all, much less a
> description of you or me.
>
> John Burgeson (Burgy)
>
> www.burgy.50megs.com
> (science/theology, quantum mechanics, baseball, ethics,
> humor, cars, God's intervention into natural causation,
> etc.)
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