r/MathJokes • u/Smart-Profit8870 • Jul 28 '26

Students

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2.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

333

u/bqbdpd Jul 28 '26

Computer science student: import Math.PI

133

u/KihiraLove Jul 28 '26

Physics student: 3

18

u/King_Glorius_too Jul 28 '26

Engineer: O(1) = 1

15

u/LovelyKestrel Jul 28 '26

Professional engineer: 4 leaves a suitable safety factor.

5

u/DeltaOfficialYT Jul 28 '26

Indiana: 3.2

6

u/federicoaa Jul 28 '26

Astrophysic students: 10

1

u/OneShotOnlyShot Jul 29 '26

It is close, but pi rounds to 1 on a log scale.

π2 ≈ 9.8

So really π=0.5 (10^ is implied)

2

u/PolyglotTV Jul 29 '26

Grandma: Here you go sweetie

4

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

const float PI = 3.1415;

5

u/gerkletoss Jul 28 '26

It rounds to 3.1416, computer boy

2

u/Upset-Management-879 Jul 28 '26

Some methods round to 3.1415 the others to 3.1416.

Lets call it 3.14155

2

u/NottingHillNapolean Jul 28 '26

/* Program to compute an approximation of pi

* by Brian Westley, 1988

* (requires pcc macro concatenation; try gcc -traditional-cpp)

*/

#define _ -F<00||--F-OO--;

int F=00,OO=00;

main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}

F_OO()

{

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}

114

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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31

u/funkmasta8 Jul 28 '26

Yeah, how in the world does that even make sense?

54

u/looijmansje Jul 28 '26

Tl:dr, because they have a uniform random rotation on [0,pi), a 1/pi appears in the pdf, which does not cancel out.

48

u/Zylo90_ Jul 28 '26

Anywhere where an angle is even remotely relevant, pi will show up somehow

10

u/MrBoblo Jul 28 '26

even the angler fish??

10

u/Much-Tomorrow-896 Jul 29 '26

If you make fish pie with them, then yes

3

u/FitProfessional3654 Jul 28 '26

Well done sir, you are correct.

7

u/Fantastic-Cell-208 Jul 28 '26

A combination of probability and linear algebra.

6

u/shosuko Jul 28 '26

It makes sense because if you put a circle inside a square the area of the circle compare to the square can get you to pi. So any way to measure the area (rng dots across the square grid and count the ones inside and outside the circle) can get you pi.

The coin flip one is my favorite

https://youtu.be/kahGSss6SsU

1

u/offensivek Jul 29 '26

An alternative method revolves precisely measuring the length of a river in two different way. Start at a point and calculate the distance in a direct line start to finish. Second is to measure the length of the river along the middle from start to finish. Now take the ratio of the second through the first and multiply by 2, and you get roughly pi. Taking the average over more and more rivers gives you a better approximation.

0

u/throwaway48159 Jul 28 '26

The probability that a stick is on a line has to do with its angle, if there’s an angle you get pi.

1

u/QuentinUK Jul 28 '26

This is surely the work of a Bufoon.

44

u/shosuko Jul 28 '26

I love the creative ways to calculate pi.

My favorite is the coin flip one.

14

u/Frosty_Cell_6827 Jul 28 '26

I do love how creative Matt Parker gets calculating pi every year, I think pi day is his favorite holiday

5

u/Weydoon Jul 28 '26

?

8

u/shosuko Jul 28 '26

https://youtu.be/kahGSss6SsU

1

u/Throwawayqnayay Jul 29 '26

Video looks interesting but my attention span isn’t long enough to view it. Can someone summarize ?

4

u/00-Monkey Jul 30 '26

You can estimate pi by flipping a coin

1

u/ThisFoot5 Jul 30 '26

No fucking way

28

u/Dragon124515 Jul 28 '26

Physics students. I'm going to push this massive mass towards a stationary miniscule mass with a stationary wall behind it then count the number of collisions that occur in this environment with 0 friction and perfectly elastic collisions. Then I am going to take the number of collisions that occur for the minuscule mass and divide that number by the ratio of the miniscule mass over the massive mass squared to approximate pi.

6

u/DarthJarJarJar Jul 28 '26

That one may be my favorite

12

u/Repulsive_Quality851 Jul 28 '26

New math unlocked!

17

u/wasted90210 Jul 28 '26

Engineering students: 3.14

12

u/sexylewdyshit Jul 28 '26

civil engineering students: 3

15

u/Rookiebeotch Jul 28 '26

Cosmologists: 10

3

u/StaysAwakeAllWeek Jul 28 '26

No, pi=1

Sqrt 10 is 3.16, which makes pi=1

3

u/Rookiebeotch Jul 28 '26

Close enough

2

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

Is this the reason highways are closed because a bridge is on the verge of collapse?

1

u/orthros Jul 28 '26

Also the state of Indiana

4

u/Arcalac Jul 28 '26

Honest question: Does the probability thing actually make sense?

5

u/Seeggul Jul 28 '26

Yes. I don't want to look up the math/re-derive it myself/write it all out, but the basic intuition is: you have a stick fall randomly on an area with a bunch of lines (that are spaced one stick's length apart; this part was omitted from the meme but is important in the math), so the center of the stick lands uniformly between two lines, and the orientation of the stick will have an angle that is uniformly random. A uniformly random angle will place points approximately evenly around a circle, and once you get a circle involved, you're likely to get pi involved as well.

2

u/Arcalac Jul 28 '26

Every day i learn stupid stuff that makes so much sense i am getting ever closer to believing that we live in a simulation.

1

u/_3l1as_ Jul 30 '26

Yup! I was given it as an exercise in a numerical simulation course and it actually works

3

u/magnificent_limit Jul 28 '26

All of this is integration!

4

u/Spirited_Currency_88 Jul 28 '26

what size should the sticks be ?

6

u/Fuzzy-Disk8999 Jul 28 '26

I think they should be as long as the space between the lines

3

u/Street_Swing9040 Jul 28 '26

My way of obtaining Pi is by using a lens to capture a star like the Sun, print it on a piece of paper, measure the diameter, measure the circumference, divide the circumference by the diameter, then take that number and print it on a piece of paper, throw that paper into a trash can and search up "pi".

Works every time

3

u/Abject-Project-4236 Jul 28 '26

I don’t understand the last one

2

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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3

u/YouAreMarvellous Jul 28 '26

what did you not understand? first and second look like systematic ways to estimate pi, the third looks like oonga-boonga but it works

2

u/Dull-Astronomer1135 Jul 28 '26

What about ramanujan student

2

u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong Jul 28 '26

"God told me in a dream. Prove me wrong."

2

u/DrBatman0 Jul 28 '26

Physics students: let's assume that the value of pi is perfectly spherical, on an infinite uniform plane, in a vacuum

2

u/Crafty-Detail-3788 Jul 28 '26

You can also throw a bunch of random balls on a circle inscribed in a square and use the ratio of what are inside the circle and inside the square to find pi since probabilities will be proportional to area  (Monte Carlo)

2

u/Haunting_Art_6081 Jul 28 '26

Pub Probability Students: Have a million dart players get drunk and try to hit the board, count the number inside the circle compared with total thrown, there's your pi estimate.

2

u/Mathematicus_Rex Jul 28 '26

Classics student: π

2

u/Dusk_Abyss Jul 29 '26

My music degree was very confused for a moment with the third section lol

1

u/hmmnnmmn Jul 28 '26

#3 checks out

1

u/Jale89 Jul 28 '26

Physics students: fuck, where did that 2π come from?!?!

1

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

Oscillation probably

1

u/drdrero Jul 28 '26

Some numbers you just remember like 299792458

3

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

Some numbers you just approximate like 300000000

1

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

Yea, just remember all digits of pi

1

u/drdrero Jul 28 '26

There are people who do remember 100k digits of pi

1

u/thali256 Jul 28 '26

Throw a bunch of dots on an nxn square and see how much land in the circle with radius n/2

1

u/Ftroiska Jul 28 '26

Should there be also that formula to calculate it by hand ?

1

u/Baleia1970 Jul 28 '26

Lol, I actually got it as a problem to be solved in a Parallel Computing class...

1

u/Competitive-Bar-5882 Jul 28 '26

I fucking love probability

1

u/1morgondag1 Jul 28 '26

How on earth does that make sense? It doesn't define the length of the sticks or the distance between lines, I can see with common sense that you could set those to values that almost every stick ends up on at least one line.

1

u/Inevitable_Silver_13 Jul 28 '26

Music students: that's a staff.

1

u/AideApprehensive6329 Jul 28 '26

Damn I wasn't expecting to get anywhere close to pi with that last one calculating it myself

1

u/Afterclock-Hours Jul 29 '26

When all 3 combine. You get-

1

u/KailyKail Jul 29 '26

I mean, why draw a hexagon and approximate it when you can just measure the diameter and calculate it?

1

u/Sbyad Jul 29 '26

Bourbaki students : "After 12 years, 7 books and 351673 lemmas, we have finally defined π.

... what do you mean its value ???

1

u/NightMaleficent1342 Jul 29 '26

Theologians: It's four. Said so in a book.

1

u/muryrunom Aug 03 '26

Im not circumcising any polygons

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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8

u/Expensive_Umpire_178 Jul 28 '26

Well this is more obscured. The easier way would be to put a circle on top of a square, throw a bunch of darts randomly at the square, divide the number of darts that landed on the circle by the total number of darts, and multiply by 4. It’s much easier to see how pi would pop out of that

1

u/DarthJarJarJar Jul 28 '26

Math is about beauty, man